The biggest issue for me with keeping cars a long time is really safety. I kept my last car for 17 years, and by the time I got rid of it, it was really light-years behind modern vehicles in terms of safety features (no side air bags, no rearview cam, no anti-lock breaks, no collision avoidance systems, etc.)
It was still going pretty strong but vehicle tech advances rather quickly these days that after about a decade there is really a sizable improvement in safety.
An earlier form of anti-lock brakes were available in some American cars starting in the late 60's. It was standard in the 1974 Lincoln Continental, 4 years before Mercedes even had it as an option.
https://www.hagerty.com/media/archived/antilock-brakes/
My 2009 Land Rover, which I upgraded recently to a 2020 Land Rover, didn't even have airbags. 12 years is a very very long time in safety tech. I would not be happy driving around a vehicle that's over ten years old these days.
Just to be clear, every vehicle sold in the US, Canada, and a number of other nations had to have front left and right airbags as of 1998. By 2009 -- 11 years later -- even the lowest cars usually had a barrage of airbags, ABS was mandatory, and so on.
So you are most certainly mistaken about the claim that it is sold "everywhere", although you have since edited that to be restricted to "where they sold them" which conveniently excludes all the places where it simply couldn't be sold.
Selling as late as 2016 with no air bags, in many Western first-world nations, obviously including such as the UK where it was built, but I think also France, Germany, etc.
In fact they even specifically say:
> However, safety regulations due for introduction in 2015 requiring minimum pedestrian safety standards and the fitment of airbags to commercial vehicles cannot be met without a wholesale redesign of the Defender.
How bizarre. I deleted my final comment because I realized it is ridiculous that it has gone this deep. But here we are.
It's funny that you bring up editing, because the single thing I was replying to was your original claim that your airbag-less vehicle was the same model they sold "everywhere" (which you later edited because of course the vehicle was illegal in a number of nations). I never contested that you bought some bizarrely outdated vehicle in the UK in 2009. If I edited a comment, I made it more accurate immediately, and it's incredibly strange that you think you've caught me out.
I truly don't care about your strange retro vehicle. But in this conversation it is so hilariously irrelevant to the context.
There are plenty of base-model US cars from the mid-90s without airbags.
It's not as crazy as it sounds; with the front-impact ones, wearing your seatbelt works about as well, and you don't have to worry about Takata syndrome.
Yes, but parent poster said 2009. I asked the country because not every market gets modern safety features in all cars; for example the original VW Beetle (as the "Volkswagen Sedán") was sold in Mexico until ~2003.
I remember my 1990 Ford Escort and grandmother’s 1990 Camry having automatic shoulder belts that were mounted on the driver and front passenger door frames and would be pulled down when the door was opened and up when you closed it. You still had to buckle the lap belt yourself.
This was apparently because at that point, manufacturers could get out of putting in front airbags if they put in those automatic should belts. Not sure when that was tightened up.
It seems like that 2009 Land Rover might have been 12 years behind the times if it didn't have airbags. I was look at new cars in the UK around the turn of the century and airbags were widely used even then.
A lot of the more recent improvements seem to be trying to compensate for either gross driver failures or much reduced visibility with modern vehicle designs. It will be interesting to see whether they end up significantly improving safety overall or just cancelling out the negative effects of less careful driving and less visibility.
I have an 11 year old SUV that I use to tow a trailer. Came with loads of airbags, ABS, traction control, stability control, disc brakes around. I feel incredibly safe in it and have zero incidents.
Age is being used as a really sloppy proxy for safety features, when a lot of these things were completely standard 10 years ago. As mentioned in another post, a 2009 Range Rover came with every major safety feature.
this seems like yet another excuse for X as a service just to induce even more demand from subscription based services. there's nothing wrong with merely accepting autos as a giant depreciating asset that does exactly as you need and once you have finished financing the vehicle you can amortize its cost by double the years of the median financing term.
Even without improvements to air bags and the like a newer car is safer because it's body has less structural fatigue. It would be stronger in a crash.
Safety... for whom? Occupants, yes. But for pedestrians, bicyclists and other vulnerable road users, it's gotten worse with the trend for larger vehicles [1][2][3] in the last decade.
Pedestrian impact is an explicit design feature in modern cars. That's why bumpers and hoods have the same general shape on nearly every modern car. However, trucks and SUV have become extremely popular. There's only so much you can compensate for when the mass of the car is increased.
IIHS is changing tests now to incorporate pedestrian safety tests. NHTSA is also considering the change.
There is zero technical reason for trucks and SUVs to have the large hood they do that strikes adult pedestrians center mass (and kids at head level). It's extra comical on the upcoming electronic versions where instead of safe design, you get a "frunk".
It's design nonsense and the only reason it ever got this bad is the regulators are fully captured.
New hoods often are, actually — Euro NCAP tests pedestrian collision safety. Notably the VW ID.4 at least has a hood designed to collapse inward in that case; I assume other cars have this feature as well
Yeah ideally the whole car upon impact would instantly turn into a big sploosh of medicated gel, safely ensconcing passengers and nearby pedestrians or cyclists and bringing everything to a sudden but harmless stop, and also it would make your skin look great.
Sudden stop is never harmless for a person even if we could eliminate the external mechanical injuries entirely - the brain continues forward and meets the facial bone structure inside the skull, internal organs rupture as they keep moving forward while the skeletal structure stops... Enter the airbag.
The airbags inside the car are meant to cushion the hard surfaces of course and the curtain bags are meant to keep people and their limbs in the protective passenger area when the car spins, but also they are acting as a counterforce and slow the speed of the person a little more gently, versus an instant stop to a solid object such as the dashboard, causing internal injuries as well as the external trauma.
Also airbags are a very good reason to wear a seatbelt - if you pop the airbags while colliding at relatively slow speeds, you'll probably lean forward a bit from the deceleration only to be punched in the face by the bag (and probably get some vertebrae renovated).
So while installing external airbags to cushion the pedestrian impact sounds like a good idea it probably isn't, as the bag suddenly expanding from the direction of the vehicle would simply add to the energy and "punch" the pedestrian away from the car at the 200mph at which an airbag expands.
Lastly, I'm all in for the gel from Demolition Man, why aren't we funding it?? Would it come in different scents and colors? :-D Really the car could one day - when detecting an unavoidable collision - spray out a foam or expanding gel that would cushion the surfaces and also decelerate the fall of the pedestrian - I'm thinking Final Fantasy Spirits Within -soldiers drop gel"?
Interesting. That technology deploys on impact; one could imagine a more optimal version that detects pedestrians with proximity sensors and inflates an airbag before the vehicle even reaches the pedestrian. (Obviously the car could also do automatic braking, but the airbag could help in situations where stopping wasn't possible.)
It seems like such an airbag could be used to lessen the impact of vehicle-to-vehicle collisions as well. Perhaps have multiple inflators so the car can select air pressure based on the projected force of impact.
Airbag suits are available now for motorcycle riders, external car airbags would kind of be just a larger (potentially more complex) variant of the same idea.
Because the justice system consistently lets drivers who cause injuries to, or kill, pedestrians with their cars slide.
Consequences for injuring or killing pedestrians only seem to enter the equation when serious negligence is involved, like when drivers are intoxicated, or when there is a hit-and-run.
Even then killing with a car is treated far less seriously than otherwise. If you want to murder someone, have a few drinks and drive into them. They’ll be dead and you’ll get kit in a couple of years. Avoid the drinks and you might even get away with it completely.
I went to school with someone who killed another person while driving drunk. They were found guilty and the judge didn't sentence them to serve any time incarcerated.
That's not an argument for not replacing your car, it's an argument for not buying a big car when you do. At least outside the USA it's not hard to buy a new small car.
I disagree. There's no technical reason SUV and pickup truck front bumper design is so dangerous. People just prefer that design because it looks more appealing.
"When a car strikes a cyclist, the initial impact causes severe lower-body trauma, but it’s also likely to sweep that person’s legs out from underneath them. This is significant, because as the rider slides up the hood, they’re scrubbing speed and, with it, some impact force. An SUV or truck, by contrast, is taller, so the initial impact is likely to target the pelvis or even the chest. “That momentum is carried through your body,” says Hu. In addition, the front-end shape of a vehicle is vital. More than 85 percent of fatalities among pedestrians and cyclists hit by cars and light trucks involve impacts from the front of the vehicle, according to 2017 data from the National Highway Transportation Safety Administration. Modern truck and full-size SUVs favor blocky, muscular styling at the front end, rather than the more gently sloping transition from grille to hood that cars and some compact SUVs have. Instead of sliding onto the hood when hit by a truck, the rider’s pelvis and torso rotate with a twisting, tearing motion. With a squared-off front end, Hu says, “it’s basically the person wrapping around the vehicle.”"
As others have pointed out, this is really pretty irrelevant when it comes to any individual car being out-of-date safety-wise on a ~decade time scale. Completely ignoring differences in vehicle size, my old, small sedan had no side-air bags, no ABS, no rearview camera, etc., and these days every small sedan must have those features. Things are only more dangerous to pedestrians if I decide to replace my small sedan with something like a Hummer, but that's an orthogonal decision.
FWIW, one of your linked articles has a very good analysis of where pedestrian fatalities are increasing, and gives suggestions for both road design and vehicle improvements:
I completely agree. Ideally, we'd have a fleet of recent model year cars on the road, and would utilize them very heavily so in 5 years, they have ~200,000 miles on them and are near the end of their life.
I know an older couple with two vehicles from 2008 with 36k and 54k miles on them. They are in great shape, always parked in the garage at home, etc. While their natural life might be 150k, it's very likely they will be in a junkyard before then. Part availability becomes an increasing concern.
From an environmental standpoint, old cars were manufactured under less stringent emissions standards. At a certain point, the emissions required to manufacture a car are more than offset by the marginally lower emissions from a new vehicle.
Interesting thought, but does it change anything? Each vehicle is still driven the same # of total miles and the same number of annual total miles are driven, so I'm not sure if the resulting carbon output is any different.
From a safety standpoint, we'd have fewer deaths after implementation. Everyone would be on modern safety features.
From an environmental standpoint, the benefit would be on vehicles where parts get more difficult to find or the owner deems the vehicle to be lacking sufficient safety features (and possibly both, a couple hundred dollar repair prompting the owner to retire the car).
I don't have any numbers to estimate the impact, it's my shower thought for how to maximize asset utilization and minimize vehicle deaths.
> From an environmental standpoint, the benefit would be on vehicles where parts get more difficult to find or the owner deems the vehicle to be lacking sufficient safety features (and possibly both, a couple hundred dollar repair prompting the owner to retire the car).
What does any of that have to do with the environmental standpoint?
Resources were used to build the vehicle. If a car ends up in the junk yard while still drivable or economically repairable, I wouldn't consider the car to be "fully depreciated". The objective function I'm considering is emissions/deaths per mile.
The most extreme example would be a car with a catastrophic failure that will happen at 200k miles, but the owner only drives 1k miles per year. Parts will become an issue far before the useful life of the vehicle is up. The resale value would be basically 0 after 50 years because everything is so out of date, from safety features to creature comforts.
What kind of vehicles are you using? I’m always interested in how newer model vehicles are behaving after so many miles. With the new tech like so many cars having turbos fleets are really the only chance we get to see long term reliability in a short time period after introduction
Super late reply, but the low mileage cars I mentioned were a 2011 Ford Ranger and ~2008 Ford Fusion. As far as my hypothetical ideal fleet, probably full of vehicles from Honda and Toyota. They have a strong reputation of lasting forever with just the wear and tear items.
I'm personally driving a 2010 Civic which just crossed 100k miles, and a 2009 CR-V with 140k miles. The Civic will likely be sold in the next few years pursuing an upgrade to safety while it would still have a ton of life left in it. It'll probably go to some high school kid who is learning to drive, and its end of life will more likely be due to a crash.
I just put money into the Civic for wheel bearings (likely needed because it sat most of 2020), transmission fluid, and brake fluid, and the CR-V checked out fine at its oil change. In ~75k miles, we have only done front suspension, tires, wheel alignments, oil changes, and a set of brakes on the CR-V. It spent a couple years in a town with terrible roads, which I point to as the primary reason for the suspension breaking.
Because of factors we often don't consider (such as this), I have a hard time believing ICE cars will be less than 50% of the US market (edit: including used cars) in the next 20 years.
It has yet to be seen if a mass produced sub-30K electric will be economically viable for a owner at the 10+ year ownership scale.
ICE is proven to be if maintained.
Battery maintenance costs may prove to be the achilles heel of Electric Car ownership, which is why so many people are pushing for a post ownership society / CAAS (car as a service) model instead of owning a car
> which is why so many people are pushing for a post ownership society / CAAS (car as a service) model instead of owning a car
This is great for dense city dwellers that don't use their car much, but horrific for suburbanites, rural Americans, and people that drive more than 15k miles per year.
Reduction in ownership is happening everywhere. Devices, media, now cars and homes. It's not a good trend for many consumers. We'll all wind up as serfs.
I have owned an EV for 4 years, no battery maintenance issues, but the real achilles heel is winter. EVs completely fail at winter, when the temps start dropping below freezing you are looking at 40% advertised range depending on the conditions. Strong winds and steep terrain will take that figure down further. The chargers can't push enough amps into the batteries below freezing so the charge rate is slower. You can't leave the car outside in the cold or it will need to heat it up to prevent permanent damage.
Batteries that have worn down to the point they aren't useful for transportation are still useful for grid storage. Hopefully that will make battery replacements a viable value proposition.
My post is about reality today, not hopeful or what is possible at some point in the future.
I have yet to see any manufacture come out with a battery replacement program that is economical. Look at Prius as an example, battery goes out in one of them it is basically totaled from a economic stand point unless you DIY the replacement with "unauthorized" batteries. I believe the Chevy volt is the same way
The reason no one is doing a battery replacement program is that they don't make sense. The battery is the most expensive part, and main expense, in an electric car. When it's trashed The reasonable thing to do is replace the car.
If you're worried about the lifetime of the battery in an electric car. Remember that it uses the same tech as your mobiles and laptops. But the charge, drain cycles of your phones battery cells are once a day. Still they are usable even after several years. But in a car, it's cells charge, drain cycles are going to be way fever a year. I do have friends with early Model S cars, and no one of them are complaining about range loss. I'm sure they must have lost some. But not problematic amounts. I do have the impression that early Leaf cars had a bit more problems with this, and that their battery care electronics where more primitive. But in fairly sure they've sorted that on the newer ones.
I am aware, and that is my entire point. The battery is more or less the equivalent of the engine in the ICE.
Internal combustion engines however have no problems lasting for 10, 15, 30+ years if they are maintained. I know many people that have cars over 15 years old.
It is yet to be seen how long battery packs of different design will last. Or if the drive to get more and more range out of these battery packs will push mfg's to squeeze more range sacrificing longevity as competition in the past increases . That is going to be a problem.
This planned obsolescence model we have for cell phones, to cars with shorter and shorter product life spans is not good for anyone, not the environment, not poor people that generally depend on older used cars which makes electric uses cars at ticking time bomb...
the solution can not be "just replace your $40-$60K car when the battery dies like your iPhone" that is moronic
Well, there's the part where you can carry 5 gallons of fuel in a can and instantly add 100+ miles of range. Try doing that with enough battery to go 10 miles... Then there's winter, and finally, there's cost. I can get a used ICE car (not a nice one) for $2K. I suspect the value of batteries alone will prevent electrics from being as affordable?
When you buy a $2k ICE car, you have to factor in ongoing maintenance of a $2k ICE car. Electric vehicles have fewer moving parts, no oil or filters to change, no emissions tests to worry about, even the brake pads last several times longer. Combined with the lower price of electricity vs fuel, the gap in total cost is not going to be that wide.
The average American drives 16 miles each way to work. (Pre-pandemic, so it's even lower now). The kind of person who'd buy a $2k car can get by with very little battery capacity.
The ability to refuel a 6000lb. truck in 5 minutes and then drive 400+ miles towing a trailer full of livestock when the outside temperature is below freezing? This is not some edge-case thing but a requirement for a lot of people in the USA.
I looked at installing a backup camera in my 10 year old 4Runner a couple years back after a friend got me one for Christmas. After looking through a bunch of YouTube videos, we returned it. It was going to be a significant project.
I installed a Sony CarPlay unit and camera in my 2003 4Runner back in 2016, and I thought it was pretty easy. Took a few hours, but nothing complicated.
As a counterpoint, I installed a Kenwood Carplay unit and backup camera in an F150 a few years ago and was not very difficult at all. It took a couple of evenings (one for the camera one for the head unit).
Crutchfield will sell you a plug and play adapter from your factory radio to the new radio's pin outs. They do the wiring so you don't have to solder anything.
Having navigation and a backup camera definitely made it much nicer to drive.
I do not understand what this means. You can buy standalone CarPlay/android auto head units to install in older cars, and they almost always have a connection available for rear view cameras.
The market for stand alone head units has completely collapsed in the US. This largely comes down to head units in newer cars being tightly integrated with the rest of the vehicle (particularly using non-standard form factors for mounting into the dashboard) and the stock units being "good enough" unless you are deeply into car modding. It would surprise me if even 1% of cars made after the year 2000 (which was 20 years ago, and probably the oldest vehicles anyone would daily drive, at least where I am in the rust belt) had an aftermarket unit installed. From that perspective the age of the head unit is (almost) always equal to the age of the vehicle, with CarPlay and Android Auto not being released until after reverse cameras had already been mandated in new vehicles.
Maybe the very newest cars that already have android auto and CarPlay have no reason for an aftermarket head unit, but there are plenty of options for cars made before CarPlay and android auto became standard, which is almost all cars before the last few years.
I have an older 2005 Honda Element and the double-DIN OEM CD player no longer works. Both rotary encoders for volume and tuning malfunction, and it will eject any CD placed inside it.
So, I have been looking at these on Amazon as a replacement:
Rear view camera is pretty easy to install even with out a head unit, they even make wireless ones that just mount over or under your mirror, or like a GPS unit
My mom's 2006 Honda Fit has less than 34,000 miles on it. Every time I visit home & use it, it feels like a time capsule. Basically the only safety features are the seatbelts & airbags.
That's not even that old. My 2011 4Runner just has those (plus ABS). Toyota didn't add much else until just a few years ago. The vehicle only has 75K miles on it; I'll probably keep it for quite a bit longer.
It means old cars aren't falling apart and becoming totally unfit to drive as soon anymore. Instead, they're getting replaced because new cars are leaps and bounds better, particularly in terms of safety.
I'd benefit from having a newer car in some ways, but I actively don't want any specific new model I've seen for years because of their awful uses of technology. Go back to making cars that are about driving -- safely, efficiently and comfortably -- without all that other junk, and I'll throw money at you.
But still not too much money, because I don't think fully electric vehicles and the infrastructure to support them are quite there yet, and anything using an ICE or hybrid tech feels like it's only a stepping stone to the fully electric world that we'll probably be living in a decade from now.
I can't imagine why anyone would want to buy the kinds of cars that the big manufacturers are producing today unless they had no choice, and I'm not surprised at all that more people are keeping their existing vehicles for longer.
> While the average vehicle age has risen steadily over the last 15 years, the trend accelerated during the coronavirus pandemic partly because of a drop in new-car sales, IHS said.
I'm not a car expert, but I'm guessing the dearth of driving in the past year has also affected this. Anecdotal, but I've put barely any miles on my 2013 car in well over a year, which I see as extending its life. I'm noticing my dealership has really amped up their direct-mail pleas to "come in for service," suggesting this revenue stream has dried up as cars stay in driveways.
Getting you to come in for service is just an excuse to get you to come in to look at cars. Service is usually a break-even business for dealerships, but it’s a good source of sales leads.
This is false. I've worked with many dealerships across different brands and the service department generally makes far more profit than the sales department. This is especially true outside of luxury brands where actual margins on new vehicle sales can be in the single digit percentages, while margins on basic recurring services are huge. See this Edmunds article for a pretty accurate breakdown [1].
While I was consistently surprised how many cars were still on the road over the past 18 months, I'm sure I drove less than a thousand miles. So basically didn't move the needle in terms of replacing my ten year old car.
Similar to my doctor's office (a university/corporate enterprise with multiple offices and hospitals) sending me emails during the pandemic to come in and get seen about this or that.
Seems reasonable. March/April is the end of the Concept2 indoor rowing annual "season" and I noticed that I had put essentially the same distance on my rower last year as my truck.
This seems accurate. We barely drove our car in 2020, didn't go for an oil change for basically an entire year. After some basic maintenance after we got vaccinated, it's running as well as ever.
I think another thing impacting this may be high car prices making people wait until things "cool down." A lot of folks I know are talking about how high car prices, home prices, really all prices are becoming. Some people may want to wait it out to see if this is permanent or just an aberration due to the pandemic.
Was a hair breath away from going to the dealership today and purchasing a new sedan. Realized last night that I was chucking about $10k away in sales tax / insurance premiums on a new car / and vanity - a compact used sedan thats still newish will do me just fine.
Getting a rental for a few days just to double check that I was right. Rental market sucks right now because they dumped inventory and demand has gone up, but still better to throw away $400 so I can be sure.
I find test drives to be stressful and would like to have plenty of time to mull it over. Take it on the highway, drive it in the morning to work, do a bit of night driving. I'm also using Turo which is incredibly convenient though more expensive. The option to ask a dealer to keep it overnight is interesting, I wonder if the ones near me would actually let me do it.
Good! Most modern cars made in the last few decades will easily run for 200,000 miles if properly maintained (oil changes and belts).
I don't need the absolute latest and greatest computer safety features. Some of them sound nice but if it has side+passenger airbags and seatbelts then that is good enough for me.
On the flip side, one of my family members gets a new car every year through some kind of special leasing program. Not only does that seem wasteful from a number of angles but how do you not get attached to a car you love driving? Once I find a car I like then I don't want to give it up unless maintenance becomes prohibitively expensive and even then it can be tough.
Let's not forget that car manufacturers seem to be determined to ensure that new cars are worse than old cars. What do I want in a car?
- No bluetooth.
- No touchscreens.
- Really, no screens at all.
- Cabled audio input.
A rearview camera is a good thing, except it still manages to make the car worse overall because the manufacturers somehow can't stop themselves from using the screen to display other things that should have been displayed in another way.
Worse for you. I happen to like bluetooth, backup cameras, wireless keys, and a lot of the other modern features cars have now.
Manufacturers definitely went wrong putting important controls in the touch screen. That’s a usability nightmare. I’d consider the rest to be personal preference.
No? They let you unlock your car from a distance. This is of pretty questionable utility in the first place, since you can't benefit from the unlocking without being next to the car, but it worked then just as well as it works now.
Mine at least does a lot more than that. For instance, it's smart enough to know if you put the key in the trunk and will automatically open the trunk back up. It has pretty good awareness of where it is in relation to the car, which gives me more confidence in using it that I won't do something stupid and lock myself out (or at least not be allowed to do something stupid). If those earlier systems from the 90s were just as precisely "self aware" then I'll concede this point to you, but I suspect they weren't so well integrated.
As far as the "questionable utility goes", I frankly love it. I love just walking up to my car and having it unlock for me. Sure, it's not much, but it's kind of the equivalent of Touch ID or Face ID on a phone these days. Sure, entering a PIN code isn't the hardest thing in the world, but it's the little things that make life just a smidge less annoying, right?
You didn't address my point regarding their ubiquity now, so I feel like you kinda decided to only address half my point...
Manufacturers definitely went wrong putting important controls in the touch screen. That’s a usability nightmare. I’d consider the rest to be personal preference.
I'm not sure I'd consider permanent connectivity and the related telemetry and OTA updates to be personal preference. These are often being used in ways contrary to the owner's or driver's interests, from invading privacy to "licensing" vehicle features that can be disabled later, and they come with significant security and safety risks.
I'm with you on this. Integrated bluetooth is nice to have, but if you have just aux in then you can get nearly 100% of the same functionality via a bluetooth adapter. That would be my only reason not to get an old car but even then, the cassette tape adapters are pretty good substitute for aux in.
Cars with a standard size din connected radio can have Bluetooth without any of the other stuff - far better than a c90 adapter, and usually with have 3.5mm and usb power as well.
You can get rearview cameras that integrate into the rear view mirror. It does make for a tiny screen, and good luck finding that on a new car, but the option exists for older cars at least.
Old cars can be maintained to run for hundreds of thousands of miles, but you might run into a catastrophic failure (main seal leak or similar) where the cost of the repair exceeds the value of the vehicle.
The odds of this happening is declining over time. You can see the change in used car prices where popular reliable cars like the crv or crosstrek maintain a resale value above 10k for 5-10 years dependent on trim.
"popular reliable" is basically just "what all the rich people bought last decade"
They maintain value because a Sienna that's had an easy 100k miles with by the book maintenance is in much nicer shape and inherently has more life left than a Pacifica that was rode hard and put away wet over the same time period and distance.
You can't fight rust and degrading rubber. That's whats killing these old cars. My parents just walked away from a 14 year old Subaru. Headgasket was shot, fuel lines and brake lines rusted and shot, whole laundry list of other rusted and shot components like suspension, dash lit up like a chrismas tree, total bill was going to look like $15k for a car that wasn't worth $9k even before all this went down. A car is a wear item and eventually needs replacing unless you have years worth of knowhow and own expensive equipment like a lift and sometimes specialized tools for your vehicle.
Matter of perspective.. the only thing you list that I'd consider a concern to investigate is the "dash lit up like a chrismas tree". Everything else you mention is cheap replacement work.
The warning lights could be just a few cheap sensors but could also be very expensive ECU replacements. So that one I'd have to dig deeper but the rest wouldn't bother me to buy such a car and fix it up in a weekend.
the buyer should think about the replacement value of the vehicle.
I might spend $1500 on my 12 year old car (which is "only" worth 4200 according to KBB), instead of spending lot more money to get a different used car with unknown issues or a hefty monthly payment.
My modern car made my insurance rate go down. Most of your rate is about damage you cause to others. Modern safety features, at least according to my insurance company math team, make my car less likely to hurt someone else or their car.
In an efficient market anyway, and auto insurance definitely isn't where I am!
Theft premium stays the same, even though replacement cost has gone down and it's less valuable as a target. You'd think other cars becoming safer on average would decrease the risk of getting into accidents at their fault and at my fault, but the comprehensive premium stays the same on a now older car.
I find it hard to believe that auto thieves somehow avoid the equally dense town 1hr down the highway.
If you have an old enough car, and are willing to pay the cost to replace if it you get into an accident, you can drop the comprehensive and collision coverage. This makes my old 2003 car cheaper to insure than my 2020 car, though I'm taking a bit extra financial risk, so it's not an apples to apples comparison.
Same here. Bought a Volvo which is more expensive and has a more powerful engine than the Opel that I had before for 16 years, I have even added some options to the insurance coverage compared to before, but now I pay 300$ less than before => of course I'm happy, but it's weird, didn't expect this... .
Maybe the car's brand has as well something to do with it? Maybe some statistics show that for some reason Opel drivers cause more damages or whatever... . Misterious... .
2004 sebring. Traded in in 2018 after 235k miles - I'd had reasonable maintenance on it, but last couple years was getting to be a bit more each year. Last 6 month my mechanic said "it needs engine work, but I can't tell you how much it will be until I take apart the engine, and... that's probably going to cost more than a couple thousand all told.". 235k miles wasn't too bad. I got a 2016 car for around $12k with ... 7k miles on it, getting around 40mpg now, and it's doing fine. I don't want to keep it another 12-13 years, but suspect I could, given how it's holding up so far and how much I drive.
I would not say "might" but "will". Eventually the car becomes more expensive to maintain than to replace. But that is not some terrible thing to avoid, it's just a recognition that the car has a finite life you need to estimate when making your purchasing decision, so those maintenance costs are fairly shared by the seller and buyer, with the seller paying half the future maintenance forward in the form of depreciation and the buyer agreeing to take on the other half in exchange for a cheaper car.
Why does it have to be a clunker? In what world are you buying a $12,000 car? Used? So you're guaranteed at least $2400 a year, or maybe $3000 a year(which is ridiculous) keeping an older car going.
> Spend $3000 a year keeping some clunker working and hoping a big bill doesn’t come along, or spend $2400 a year for a new car.
Assuming we're talking economic cars (Honda, Toyota, Mazda, etc), it is very difficult to imagine spending $3K a year in maintenance. Maybe once in a decade if you're super unlucky.
These are cars that'll go on nearly forever on just an oil change a year (less than $100) and belts and tires every so-many years (depending how much you drive).
There is no math in the world that'll make a new car cheaper to own and operate than an old reliable brand car. If you enjoy newer cars, enjoy! But it won't be cheaper.
You can believe that if you want, my mother just paid $2800 to get her Citroen through another year. Throw in the 1000 a year deprecation as well and it’s far cheaper, and more importantly more predictable, to have a new car.
> it’s far cheaper, and more importantly more predictable, to have a new car
It can never be cheaper to have a new car. Do the math objectively and this is clear.
It can be more predictable, if you value that. Lease a new car, you know exactly what you're paying every month and for how long. Sure. But it'll be a lot more than an old car.
> You can believe that if you want
I don't believe, I have all my car expenses tracked since the early 90s so I know what I spend. In those 30 years I've mostly had cheap reliable old cars and a few new cars. The new cars have their joy, but they are a huge money pit. Currently my newest car is 17 years old and the oldest is 33 years old.
No new cars for me ever again, I let others pay the depreciation so I can get nearly-free transportation.
If you wanted cheap transportation, there's nothing cheaper to own than a ~$3K-4K used Honda/Mazda/Toyota. You obviously cannot have 1K/year in depreciation on a car that cost so little. New cars will be guaranteed to depreciate way more than that though.
The strategy for cheap transportation is buy that reliable car for 3-4K, drive it for ten+ years with minimal maintenance, insure for liability only. At the end of the years you can sell it for pretty much same as the buy price if you kept it clean. You can easily verify this by looking at craigslist prices for, say, a Honda Civic from the 90s to the 00s. A clean running car will only depreciate to a certain point and no more. If you buy it at the bottom of the depreciation curve you won't lose any money in depreciation. For some models, if you hold them for a while, it'll actually appreciate.
A Citroen is not a Honda/Mazda/Toyota. With an esoteric car like that, I don't doubt parts are expensive and reliability is low.
Citroen’s very common in my county - far more than a Mazda
Your experience may be that used cars are cheap. My experinece over 20 years is that’s not always the case. I’ve had good used cars and awful used cars, the awful ones costing more than my current lease even before you get into the less concrete value of reliability and comfort.
I don’t deny that used cars can be cheaper. I simply state that’s not always the case.
I "repaired" a car that was worth 600€ because without a repair nobody would be willing to buy it for its true value. I'm pretty sure value of the car (to me) exceeds 600€ + the cost of repair now.
Your calculation is silly and so many people fall into this trap. If you want to calculate whether a repair is worth it you have to either calculate cost per mile or cost per month. If a repair costs 1000€ and buying a new car would get you 200€ monthly payments and the repaired car survives 5 months then you just broke even and every month after that is profit. Your new car is never going to make you a profit.
The only thing you lost is the opportunity cost of not driving a new car.
When people say "where the cost of the repair exceeds the value of the vehicle." what they really mean is that they want a new car and there is nothing wrong with that but it is absolutely not cheaper than maintaining the old car a little bit longer.
I always thought they were saying, “Sell the car for scrap, take the money you would’ve spent on the repair and buy another (functioning) car for 600€ cash“.
I don’t think they’re saying “get a new car with a monthly loan.”
It’s remarkable how much they’ve improved. When was the last time you saw a car on the side of the road with its hood up and steam pouring out of the engine compartment?
>When was the last time you saw a car on the side of the road with its hood up and steam pouring out of the engine compartment?
Friday afternoon. Although to be fair it was gray ATF smoke and not steam.
I stopped and asked the guy what was up because I probably could have helped if it was easy and the details of the situation favored doing so.
Turns out "muh million mile 4Runner" had sprung a leak in the transmission cooling plumbing. Based on the age of the vehicle I decided it would be better for him to get it towed than have me attempt a field repair so I lectured him on the basics of how an automatic transmission works and why he would be maxing an expensive gamble with bad odds if he were to pour a couple quarts in it and try to make it a few miles to where he was going rather than tow it.
On the downside, the engines in cars will pollute more as they age. This will make reducing pollution more difficult as people stick to their older and less efficient cars.
You're discounting the immense carbon footprint of building a new car then shipping it to the dealer. A number I remember, that might be wrong, is that over 50% of a car's lifetime emissions happen before it leaves the factory.
This is a really misguided opinion. Even an EV still has a significant carbon footprint in terms of electricity production. While it is possible to reduce or negate this with renewables in the future, its much less likely that building them now has a less significant carbon footprint. Plus, the old ICE vehicles people are driving are still providing lots of value with their cost already sunk. Its not like a lot of people are daily driving their classic Impala from the 60s.
> The footprints can be reduced at scale over time
Which arguably supports driving older cars longer because not only does it reduce the overall frequency of car manufacturer, it also pushes that manufacturing process further into the future when the environmental impact of manufacturing a replacement would be lower.
Metals can be recycled perfectly to space/medical/marine/any grade, they do not degrade like plasics. You can get a collection of metal scraps and produce pure elemental iron if you want
"over 50% of a car's lifetime emissions happen before it leaves the factory."
Totally wrong, it's only 20%
Think about it - if most of emission wad in production, electric cars would make no sence, they have higher production footprint and lower running footprint
Someone needs to buy a new car so everyone else can get that deal on a used one. I played the lease game before, ended up driving brand new cars for around $2000 a year. After 10 years I paid around 20k, sure, but I also had a new car every 2.5 years (dealers are always buying out leases to get you into a new new car).
New cars aren't, or at least weren't, always this massive financial blunder people claim.
If it ends up costing you a few grand more per decade, why not lease, live within bumper to bumper warranties, and create the vehicles people actually seem to want, used ones.
Several budget brands have leases this cheap. Hyundai, Kia, and Honda all come to mind. I'm pretty sure just the other week I saw a car lot commercial offering somewhere in the ballpark of this amount for a Kia.
Likewise in the UK - Nissan leaf is about £300/month or about 415USD.
I feel like leasing in the UK is not a good deal, at least to me. I think a fair amount of people outside of tech get a company car allowance that probably props up prices a bit - I don't see why anyone else would pay these rates unless they absolutely must have a new car Vs a used one
From my own research, those numbers requires you to make less than ~$65k for various tax rebates. Actual cost in CA for a Bolt is more like ~$200/month for a 10mi/year lease (which isn't a bad deal in itself, but far from $30).
I had a Hyundai Elantra for $165/month after tax plus about $300 in various fees at the start of the lease. But to get great lease deals you have to love the process of seeking them out and negotiating. Otherwise, just suck it up and pay a bit more, save yourself some time. Rodo.com is a great place for many decent lease deals where they’ll even deliver the car to you.
Lease payments aren’t the issue with that strategy, taxes are.
All told I am probably spending about 1/2 or less what you are per decade by swapping leases every 2.5 years vs buying new and keeping it until it’s not worth maintaining. And that’s with buying nice new cars and always getting it repaired at the dealership. Which conversely means you can also drive a nicer model at the same price.
The mechanical bits might last 200,000 miles, but no one will be able to use the software in a decade because it was based on some proprietary interface developed by a defunct car manufacturer. For example you might be able to replace a blind spot detection sensor in the future, but since the parts are coded and require a cloud service to 'activate' you are more or less screwed. And, most likely the manufacturer designed the computer to refuse to allow the car to start without the sensor so you are left with a heavy, environmentally-destructive paperweight to send straight to the crusher.
If you shop ~pre-2014 or so models you should not have this terrible problem. I would do as much research as I could and get something older just to avoid such things. In my household both cars are older than that and my (independent) mechanic can do anything we require. Granted, that is today, and in the likely future we may not be so lucky so enjoy it while it lasts!
My DVD based navigation system is on the newest maps it will ever have .. from 2015. It'd be nice if the data & build tools became open-source after being abandoned for ten years, but it's not up to Toyota - it's up to Garmin/Kenwood/etc. that built the unit for them.
The new car doesn't evaporate when your family member is done with it! The dealer likely makes a pretty penny on selling those, or re-leasing them as is becoming more common.
And eventually exporting them or sending them to a boneyard where they end up as bits and pieces of other cars.
The usual boneyard model these days immediately cut off the high-value parts for themselves (cat converters, rims, batteries or tires if they're newer, maybe body parts), drop it on cinder blocks for 3 months for U-pullers to take off other parts, and then crush them.
(This is why I buy mass-model Toyotas, easy to fix, always spare parts, always a buyer)
Well…sort of. As the article details, there’s a lot at the top of the market that skews that average upwards. But even then, I don’t think you can get into a Honda Civic for less than $20,000. And good luck buying an F-150.
But also it’s remarkable how long cars last now. A 2010 car is still probably in fantastic shape. (My parents’ Camry sure is.) And while the new safety features are very useful (c’mon, dad, buy the new car, you need that blind spot warning), if the car ain’t broke, why replace it?
"Historically low" does not mean zero. Prices today are 23% more than they were in 2010. So a $20,000 car in 2010 would cost just shy of $25k today even if everything about it was exactly the same.
Well, for VW specifically, I remember seeing a Jetta review from SavageGeese where he explained VW was able to improve it and make it cheaper at the same time by putting it on the same platform as the more expensive cars and just making it more modular.
So at least part of the reason would be improvements in sharing reusing resources between models increasing the economies of scale.
In general, car manufacturers also removed stuff people don't care from lower models like better rear-suspension. You also save costs by going electronic e.g. the steering wheel isn't connected to the wheels anymore, it just tells them to turn by wire. Same for the transmission, that's why cars are getting rid of the transmission lever in the middle and using weird buttons instead : it isn't actually connected to the transmission box anymore. This also extends to removing physical buttons/volume knobs.
Yes, they went up much, much more, almost double the price increase we're discussing.
Nominal median household income in 2019 was $69k, compared to $42k in 2003, for an increase of 64%[1]. The price inflation figure that the parent comment shared is about a 36% increase in nominal dollars.
Using the parent comment's inflation and ignoring his claimed 25% nominal price decline for the Golf, this means that a new Golf costs a dramatically lower portion of median income.
Whoever told you that real median income has been negative since 2003 has badly misled you. I suggest doing a quick spot-check when you hear a new figure, as these figures are very, very easy to find.
[1] https://www.statista.com/statistics/200838/median-household-... The figures are denominated in 2019 dollars, so I converted the 2003 household income figures to 2003 dollars to get the nominal comparison we're discussing. I used the parent comment's inflation figure for consistency.
I kept my ICE car (Lexus RX) for about 6 years, it was a great car and I planned to keep it until I couldn’t use it anymore but once I drove an electric car I knew it was time to upgrade, the technological leap was too great to stay in the past.
I hope to keep my electric car for at least 10 years
Is there a 10-year-capable electric car out there? I hope there is because I may need to purchase one soon. I've known too many people have issues with Teslas to consider going for one, and I'm not sure what else is out there.
I own a Peugot iOn (rebadged Mitsubishi i-MiEV) manufactured in 2012, so it's 9 years old. I bought it second hand, and the service record shows it's needed zero maintenance (aside from tires). I have not needed to perform any maintenance in the ~2 years I've owned it.
I'm not in any way recommending this specific car (although it suits me perfectly); but it shows that even a fairly early electric car like this is 10-year capable. The only downside has been the expected gradual decrease in range.
I've also owned a Tesla Model 3 for 16 months, and it's been maintenance and trouble free. I'm not denying that some people have problems with them, however that's not been my experience, nor the experience of the two other people I know who own one.
I probably plan to keep the Tesla for many years, so hope my trouble-free motoring continues :)
I've had my tesla model 3 for 2 years and haven't had to do any maintenance on it whatsoever. I've also been driving it a good amount and haven't noticed any battery degradation (I'm good about charging it to recommended levels). At this point I don't see any reason why it wouldn't last 10 years.
I kinda wish there was a good electric car that wasn't so cloud-connected though. Tesla has done some pretty good things wrt engineering (e.g. see Munro Live on youtube) due to out-of-the-box thinking and a lack of sunk costs in existing "parts box" parts, but I would rather not have Tesla be able to decide to "remove" some features if I purchase the car second-hand [0]
The most trouble-free cars I still go for are used Lexus sedans, especially those driven previously be senior citizens. Not always the coolest but man I never have to worry about anything on it.
A lot of Nissan Leaf are 10 years old. The battery did age a lot, the first Leaf generation had some bad chemistry compared to what is build today, but they still drive well.
Im in automotive maintenance and repair as a trade, and a 12 year old car is no problem for anyone but the people at the wall street journal in my opinion.
how long you keep a car is your decision. if you like it, and you're willing to pay for regular maintenance, then keep it. this "long run" comparison of owning and repairing versus buying a new car is just silly. So many people have the incentive to get you to buy a new car, but practically no one has an incentive to tell you to take good care of the things you own so they last.
And new cars arent always better. That nice collision avoidance/lane keeper and camera system? that was implemented as a countermeasure for increasing A and B pillar size after regulatory agencies decided too many americans were getting crushed to death in roll-over accidents. collision avoidance was literally the only way auto manufacturers could keep you out of a manslaughter charge thanks to the absolute byzantine nightmare of info-tainment systems that also do things like climate control.
controversial opinion here but older cars teach you a healthy fear of operating a 2000lb rolling death machine. no infofainment means they are safer for the driver, and no nanny-state A pillars mean you arent doing 80 in a 65 quite as often.
I own a 2000 mercury grand marquis. its a v8 so it inspires me to bipedal transportation pretty often with its fuel enconomy. the biggest problem I have with the car is my coworkers nicknaming me "the don" for driving a murdered-out land yacht but its what i like.
> That nice collision avoidance/lane keeper and camera system? that was implemented as a countermeasure for increasing A and B pillar size after regulatory agencies decided too many americans were getting crushed to death in roll-over accidents.
I've never heard this. Anywhere I can read more about this?
No, because this mechanic who doesn't understand that crumple zones make modern cars way safer than old ones thinks being able to repair cars makes him an engineer
You do repair work in the desert don't you? I mostly agree with your sentiment. However in the rust belt we spray corrosive agents all over our cars and within 5 years loosening half of the fasteners takes 10 times what you are probably familiar with.
Insightful. When I moved to California from Minnesota my cars were covered with “road cancer”. People looked at the rusted body panels like “What the heck is that? I’ve never seen that.” Now one of my cars is over 22 years old and still going just fine.
In my experience in the north, cars you drive in winter can get about 15-20 years before you really start to have body rust and things like brake lines start rusting out.
Right before the pandemic, I got rid of a 22 year old Honda del Sol. But it had been garaged for about the previous 10 winters. The mechanics at the dealer always went to look at it because they basically weren't on the roads any longer in New England.
I have a 2000 Jeep Cherokee that I bought from a friend at 25K miles in the Colorado mountains. It spent a handful of years there, a handful in Salt Lake City, a handful in Lake Tahoe, and another handful in Bellingham, WA, with many drives to Mt. Baker, of course :). She is at 190K and rusting but mechanics love telling me she is in great condition. Most reliable vehicle I have ever known. Simply won’t give up.
I sold my 96 last year with 318k miles on it. Ran perfectly.
It's around 325k now, I sold it to an acquaintance.
I ran into a local at the feed store who had one, and chatted him up. Turns out he has a whole little fleet of them. Easy to work on, run forever, cheap, and lots of spare parts around.
My wonder car is a 2000 Toyota Echo with 280,000 miles. It seems like magic that it keeps running. The maintenance has been oil, brakes, battery, ball joints, wheel bearings, shocks and struts and that's it.
This is why we should rotate car climates like we rotate tires.
Cars should operate for no more than 10 years per climate. It evens out the heat-death and salt-death processes for max lifespan.
Yeah, my tires are old, but they don’t sit in 105F sun either. None of my interior panels have curled up or dried out either. My (electric) coolant pump hasn’t died yet because, well, it doesn’t run as much.
This is a tire salesman trope that the "I like to sound like I care about other people's safety because the internet gives me virtue points when I do that" crowd picked up and ran with.
Ask anyone who works in the tire industry outside of sales and they will tell you that unless your tire was really, really abused or sat in the desert sun all the time 6yr is nothing and you should inspect the tire if you want to get an idea of how degraded it is.
Source: friends at cooper.
Personal anecdote time: Over the last year I went through a two and a half sets of old tires that I accumulated over the years for my van. I was intentionally doing burnouts daily to get through old stock as I planned to (and did) get new ones once I exhausted the old stockpile.
The only tires that had noticeably hardened and performed poorly (but oh boy did they do good burnouts) were the newest of the bunch and from 2016. The oldest ones were from 2009 and the half set was from 2012.
I agree almost 100% with this. The only thing I'd add is that as you head towards double digit ages, you really do have to pay attention to things like corrosion, fatigue and general accumulated wear and tear in anything that moves. Even if the vehicle has been well looked after, there can be serious safety implications from sudden metalwork failures and the like, including in parts that you wouldn't necessarily check and periodically replace as part of a routine maintenance schedule. It definitely pays to know a good local mechanic if you want to run an older vehicle.
I like older grandma cars in an additional sense: they're usually low mileage, gently driven, garage kept, and well serviced because older people tend to take care of their cars so they last and also often don't use them that much.
Most all of my vehicles have been 10+ year old vehicles, gently used, and bought for a great price from some elderly person who no longer drives/can drive or from a relative selling their parents/grandparents old ugly car they inherited and don't want. The older designs are often geared at making them easily maintainable vs new designs. This is shifting a bit and you're not starting to get in the early 2000s unless you want to get something much much older.
You do have to worry about seals, gaskets, rubber parts that have dry-rotted/cracked etc. or start to fail but the rest of the vehicle is usually in fantastic shape from my experience. I see many vehicles 10+ years old with less than 50k miles on them. It's probably hard to find anything like this any more and I really hope the pandemic doesn't inspire everyone to start picking these older used options long term because then it's going to get more expensive for me to find good reliable cheap cars.
Right. The same logic that says bike helmets lead to more deaths because people drive more risky. Which I guess is great until you get t-boned by someone you don’t see coming and just die because you didn’t have a $20 helmet on.
Car drivers are also taking less care when encountering a cyclist with a helmet on. People weirdly tend to put others into greater risk when assuming others are protected, which in case of cyclists is clearly false.
I’m not sure why this comment is being downvoted. There are multiple papers showing drivers are less safe around helmeted bike riders. Here’s one: https://psyarxiv.com/nxw2k.
This is strange, is there any major flaws to the study because anecdotally seeing helmet/no helmet does not consciously effect my driving near cyclists.
Why am I being downvote? I asked about the caveats of a research paper to someone who read it, a task that takes considerable time. Since I got not informative reply, I did read it and apparently this is a controversial topic with papers going both ways although for the areas studied it does look like it’s a true effect, but I have questions about how universal it is across different areas.
I come back to my original anecdote, helmets is not something that consciously effects my driving. Not only that, unless a road biker biking for exercise is going super chill, it’s hard to notice the a helmet or not. And second, the prevalence of helmets, the prevalence of bikers and the regional road layout all probably effect general driving behaviors around hikers. I’m skeptical this effect is universal, but sure it apparently happened in the area of Europe under conditions studied.
This isn’t even the original paper, but one responding to another paper saying the original paper was wrong. I can’t read that original paper because it’s paywalled.
From skimming the article it looks like the effect is not even at p of 0.05. But i was a bit unclear on what exactly that p value was referring to and whether they had also tested many other hypothesis after the fact, a p-hacking issue.
There’s many questions I have about the road and locations and regional factors.
First, the comment refuted evidence based on data via personal anecdotes. Second the anecdote’s assumptions were flawed. Unless one believes most drivers are psychopaths, one would not expect drivers to consciously endanger bike riders (especially since a helmet is unlikely to provide any protection from being run over.)
1) discarding individual data points because they disagree with a desired result is fraudulent science
2) Road rage and resentment against bikers is real. There many drivers that act as psychopaths and will yell and haze bikers.
3) had people read the study before downvoting they would realize the study itself state it was a hotly contested topic and was in fact a response to another paper claiming they were wrong.
I don’t think someone asking if there is flaws to that study is someone that should be downvoted.
While I can understand that with something visible and/or obvious like seatbelts, airbags and anti-lock brakes, does the average driver have any idea how safe their car is in a rollover collision? I have a 2003 and a 2020 car, and from the outside, the A-pillars look the same. (from the inside, the 2020 A-pillar looks bigger, but I always assumed that was because it has an airbag). I certainly couldn't tell you which one would be safer in a rollover (and I don't intend to find out)
I have felt the effect between our two cars, but I think it's for another reason. I enjoy driving the older car because it is lighter, it responds, and I feel less shut off. The newer car is heavier, is sluggish (but far more powerful at speed), but feels enclosed. There is a disconnect between me inside the rolling box and the rest of the world. There is less highway noise, and the outside world feels "over there". It's easier to go fast without realising.
As in, the press, the government, car manufacturers, or mechanics, really.
Mechanics would love you to buy cars that cost $2000 for a headlight change, rather than maintain your 2002 Honda with regular maintenance and responsible driving.
I have owned one car with a $2K+ headlight change (BMW - never again!) but the guy with the shop doing the work (a friend) is getting paid on the time for the job not the parts cost.
The pillars keep getting thicker so they can support the weight of the vehicle in a rollover, and also to provide space for the side curtain airbags. This creates bigger blind spots since you can’t have glass there anymore, so these other safety systems help to make up for the reduced visibility.
It's almost hilarious that the safety requirements for cars keep getting more stringent yet it's perfectly fine to sit on top of an engine and two wheels and drive down the road at any speed without any safety equipment at all.
It's almost like car drivers and motorcyclists have different consumer preferences for safety and that carries over to how they lobby their politicians on traffic laws.
Right. Sort of like the consumer preference for risk vs. cost for various safety equipment in cars could be expressed were it not for mandates for "minimal" amounts of safety equipment.
Maybe. Reasonable people will look at a motorcycle and know full well they will lose in a collision ... with anything.
Not as easy to make an informed choice about cars. The high incidence of rollovers for SUVs comes to mind. Apparently consumers had no idea that the Ford Bronco (as an example) was as deadly as it was.
I agree, it would be nice if we allowed for relaxed safety on cars as long as they were in their own category — sort of like dune buggies or something so consumers knew the trade-offs they were making.
There already is one in most places - you can register a "special" car which many vintage car enthusiasts have to do. If you're happy with the steering wheel going through your chest on collision, or drive a DIY dune buggy, that's the category you can use.
But it's funny you mentioned that - dune buggies with roll bars are great for rolling over and keeping you safe. On the other hand, most widely available sport convertibles are not.
It might be that people want to drive motorcycles, and honestly what can you possibly do to make them anywhere near as safe as a 5-star safety rated car?
Although I wouldn't be opposed to motorcycles being outlawed - I can't even imagine an America where this happens.
The parent post said "I wouldn't be opposed to motorcycles being outlawed". They didn't advocate for outlawing motorcycles. I think "Just because it doesn't affect you" is a fine reason to have a "no objection" position.
I can see why you may feel offended, but I don't think the parent post deserves your anger.
I think we all have an obligation to stand up for the rights of other people, even when the violation of those rights doesn't affect us directly.
Stating a lack of opposition to the removal of those isn't just "not caring" is actively taking a stance that you believe those rights have no value. I think requesting justification for that stance is reasonable and not an expression of "anger".
"driving a dangerous contraption" may or may not be reasonable, but it is not really a right in the same way as freedom of speech and right to a fair trial
Driving is explicitly not a right, it's a privilege. The constitution is not an exhaustive list of rights, but there are still loads of things you don't have the right to do.
I don't think OP was angry. It seemed like a fair question.
I'll bite.
When I was 16, I REALLY wanted to own a motorcycle. I thought they were the coolest.
Luckily, I was pretty poor - so I wouldn't have money for any such thing until I moved from my small town to get a job in Boston. There, I made friends with someone whose father owned a business that put people back together after motorcycle accidents. In just a couple of minutes, he convinced me of how unsafe they actually are. Despite the fact that I think motorcycles are cool as shit - it's hard to argue they are "less safe" than cigarettes for 18 year-olds (or for anyone).
Also, now that I'm older, I definitely wouldn't mind if they were banned on residential streets. At least the ones that are noisy as hell.
So - it's a mix of:
1) It wouldn't be out of line for the Government.
2) It honestly seems in-line for the Government (even if I don't really agree it's what the Government should be doing).
3) It wouldn't affect me personally.
4) Personally, it would actually be a plus since I'm older now and I can't stand the noise.
So as I said - I'm not going to vote to ban motorcycles - and I can't imagine it ever happening - but if it did - you won't see me out in the streets protesting.
I ride. I still think they are cool. I think every human has their own risk management profile - mine allows me to ride. I am not going ice skating ever again though! But I don't expect everyone to feel as I do, clearly. :-)
However regarding your points in turn:
1 & 2. I don't think nannying is what the government should be doing. I agree that seems to be the modern character of government though, at least where I live.
3. Obviously would affect me. :-P
4. I can't stand the noise either. I haven't modified my bike exhaust.
Most affected I think though would be the "uberEats-alike" delivery services as they seem largely run on the back of scooters, although ebikes are becoming popular too, though no less risky really.
Aside: if you still think motorcycles are cool, review what aspect of your risk profile precludes them. Maybe ride offroad, where traffic is much less a thing. If tarmac speed is the cool factor, you could go to a track. Modern MotoGP riders do both so you'd be in good company!
Just don't try to emulate their speed capability! (By the time you are good enough to ignore this advice, you will know it...)
One case you could make is they greatly disproportionately increase everyone else's liability insurance. They are sort of like if it was a popular exhilarating pasttime to tie a rope around loose tree limbs on people's property and pull on them while standing understand them, and the homeowner was liable if the person was hurt.
A. Motorcycles are hitting many things causing everyone's insurance to go up. But here at least, motorcycles and riders are insured differently to cars, as you'd expect with differing %chance vs damage outcomes. So not true.
B. The mysterious group "Everyone" is at fault hitting motorcycles too much, causing everyone's insurance to go up. Which seems... fair?
Your insurance price is a function of your risk of getting in an accident and the expected damage from any given accident. If your driving patterns are unchanged but many vehicles on the road have fewer safety features, the odds of a collision remain constant but the expected damage from a collision goes up. The more people who ride motorcycles, the greater the odds that any given collision will happen to be with someone on a motorcycle, and thus the greater the odds that said collision will result in severe injuries. If the odds of a collision resulting in severe injuries goes up, either the odds of collision need to go down or insurance rates need to go up.
Under those circumstances I can see how "other people riding a motorcycle" makes your premium go up.
I don't quite agree that the "odds of a collision remain constant" over time. Motorcycles take less space for one. But obviously, being subject to more damage has a selective effect.
However in any case even if the selective trend is applied to maximum, holding to the assumption of safe/damage for riding-vs-driving means that the premium will have some increase vs a "all car" world.
But I live in a world where other people affect me in so many ways that I see this as another similar effect. Damn miners stealing my gaming GPU cards...
The fact that motorcycling is a choice that none of the "think of the children" pearl clutchers make means that it is fairly immune to their lobbying efforts.
A different mirror design would also help, but those are forbidden in the US (fun trick – if the European version of the car has similar mirror mounting, order the glass from there)
I drive a 2004 Ford Expedition with 235k miles on it. My parents ended up giving it to me because after all my siblings went to college what was the point of a family vacation vehicle.
We’ve had it so long that even though I’m almost 30, it’s the vehicle I learned how to drive in. Its nicknames at the office are "Clifford the Big Red SUV" and "The Lunch Bus".
> That nice collision avoidance/lane keeper and camera system? that was implemented as a countermeasure for increasing A and B pillar size after regulatory agencies decided too many americans were getting crushed to death in roll-over accidents.
I don't buy this. It is simply a competitive advantage enabling those systems, plus being software-heavy, they do scale well. Thicker pillars are not a bad thing. Visibility is not appreciably limited by them either. If that was the case we would have a significant differential in crash statistics between the trims of the same cars with and without those systems. They would have different safety ratings.
> no infofainment means they are safer for the driver,
Unless you have data, I strongly doubt this too. No infotainment means people will handle their phone more often for navigation, music, calls etc. Stuff like CarPlay don't even allow time seeking sliders on music interfaces, they are much less distracting than full fidelity mobile interfaces.
> older cars teach you a healthy fear of operating a 2000lb rolling death machine
By that token motorcycles would teach you a healthy fear of operating without a chassis, and thus a safer vehicle?
>Thicker pillars are not a bad thing. Visibility is not appreciably limited by them either.
One Hundred Percent inaccurate. I can't see shit out of my 2014 crossover when turning to check blindspots, compared to my 90s trucks and cars I've driven. Hell, backup cameras are mandated on all new cars in the US (they are very useful, but it's also because you can't see out of your own car).
>By that token motorcycles would teach you a healthy fear of operating without a chassis, and thus a safer vehicle?
I think driving a motorcycle creates safer drivers, absolutely. I take the stance when driving, turning, merging, etc. that at any moment, any car near me is going to do something stupid. Either not see my lane-change signal, or cross the stop-sign despite it being my turn, etc.
Every person who has proactively described that level of defensive driving (that I have talked to in conversation) had at one point or another been a motorcycle rider.
> I can't see shit out of my 2014 crossover when turning to check blindspots
I learned to adjust my blind spot to be two lanes over so that I can see anything next to me in my mirrors. Checking my blindspot means looking directly out the window so that pillars don't get in the way. It's similar to how trucks do it, since they can't see out the back.
Something you may want to look into -- adjusting your blind spot so you don't have to look at your pillar.
> Thicker pillars are not a bad thing. Visibility is not appreciably limited by them either.
They really do! If you want to know what it's like transitioning from my 1980's compact SUV into my gf's 2021 compact SUV, don one of those cheap Halloween masks you wore as a kid and leave it on as you go about your business the rest of the day. Steel-toed shoes would make a great complement.
> By that token motorcycles would teach you a healthy fear of operating without a chassis, and thus a safer vehicle?
If you're referring to a perceived lack of concern for personal safety among a subset of motorcyclists, try handing one them the keys to a Bugatti Veyron and see if their behavior improves.
Psychological issues with this demographic aside, would you be willing to ride an ordinary bicycle at freeway speeds if you were able? If yes, do you think you would spend much time looking at your phone while doing so?
There’s a reason why heart surgeons have nicknamed motorcycles ”donor cycles”. An unprotective vehicle in the hands of a young male who doesn’t yet grasp his own mortality.
"When I finished high school I wanted to take all my graduation money and buy myself a motorcycle. Buy my mom said no. See, she had a brother who died in a horrible motorcycle accident when he was 18. And I could just have his motorcycle."
>I don't buy this. It is simply a competitive advantage enabling those systems,
Someone like you was probably saying the same thing about ABS on a BBS back in 1996.
These features get implemented in the higher end segments of the market and then adoption plateaus.
Most people are not going to spend thousands of dollars to have a marginally better chance of a avoiding a "less than once in a lifetime" type accident. ABS is even more useful than that and its adoption plateaued before the feds mandated it.
> Someone like you was probably saying the same thing about ABS on a BBS back in 1996.
Someone like me said ABS is purely a competitive advantage feature despite the fact that its adoption in mainstream cars struggled? That person must be rather incoherent.
> ABS is even more useful than that and its adoption plateaued before the feds mandated it.
Let's not overgeneralize the competitive advantage angle to all safety features, that would be strawmanning. Stuff like lane keep assist, adaptive cruise control are very different beasts than ABS. They have been popular features in no small part because they also offer comfort, and have luxurious connotations e.g. like Tesla's autopilot. Besides they've been cheaper to add at lower trims as defaults because like I said they are mainly software driven features and therefore the costs scale well, especially considering the vertical integration between luxury and mainstream car brands. E.g. it only costs the windshield camera and the 2 sensors to add the auto breaking feature to a Honda, when you already have the software of an Acura.
> controversial opinion here but older cars teach you a healthy fear of operating a 2000lb rolling death machine. no infofainment means they are safer for the driver, and no nanny-state A pillars mean you arent doing 80 in a 65 quite as often.
Yes, because that's how people work. Nobody was driving unsafely before, because they were afraid of their cars rolling over.
No, that's not how they work. They just died at higher rates.
That graph also correlates perfectly with smartphone adoption. Drivers are more distracted and pedestrians less aware of their surroundings than in the past.
Tech companies have the power to end the smartphone problem overnight. Just takes Apple and Google disabling the screen of any phone moving faster than 5mph.
Passengers would be inconvenienced, but basically every phone-related crash would be prevented.
Yes, they would have to return to pre-2010 life while being transported. Not exactly a huge cost compared to the number of lives saved when it’s almost entirely entertainment.
Yes, we should severely inconvenience people who are _doing the right thing_ by taking public transit so that bad drivers who can't stop checking their phones won't main/kill themselves and others.
Google and Apple are already tracking the bus/train/ferry through their mapping software. Wouldn't be hard to set up a crude geofilter and guestimate whether a user was on transit or not. Some transit agencies even integrate directly with the phone's wallet system, so you could measure that a fare was paid concievably.
YOu assume that only drivers are the problem with cell phone
More than a few pedestrians walk and use their phone, walk right out in the traffic, or other situations (some hilarious walking right into poles and getting laughed at on the internet.
I know in a few nations this may be a hard concept, but here in the US, it is absolutely NOT true that "pedestrians always have the right of way"... no no no
“Right” is a strange word here, but there are absolutely cases where pedestrians have no right-of-way over cars.
In these cases, you can be run over and you (or your family) will have no legal recourse against the driver. Zero, nada, zilch. So in the legal sense, it is not true that a pedestrian always has the right to exist at any point on the earth without being run over.
In a moral sense, perhaps every driver has an obligation to try not to run over pedestrians. That might create a “right” in some moral/ethics frameworks, but it doesn’t exist as a legal concept in my state.
If you don't mind sharing some examples I'd love to hear them, out of curiosity more than anything. Which situations (and in which country/countries) do pedestrians not have right-of-way over cars?
In America, at least in same States, pedestrians only have a right of way in a sidewalk or crosswalk.
I all also add, stepping in front of a moving vehicle means having to obey the laws of physics.
They only have the right of way in a crosswalk WHEN they have the walk symbol. If a pedestrian enters a cross walk under a don't walk symbol they do not have the right of way.
In most countries that I know of (throughout Europe, the US, Japan), if you're on the road as a pedestrian, there's no law that protects you in case you get hit by a vehicle, it's considered your fault as a pedestrian.
The exceptions are street crossings or purely pedestrian streets, which have to be marked as such.
I don't expect this to be different anywhere in the world, since most paved roads are paved for vehicles, you don't really need pavement that much for pedestrians (well, you kind of need it for pedestrian with baby strollers or wheeled luggage & co).
For the highway it's a bit trickier than you're describing:
> Pour un piéton victime d’un accident, on retiendra faute inexcusable s’il «franchit des glissières de sécurité pour traverser une voie à grande circulation (alors qu’un passage souterrain existe à côté)», s’il «fait un effort particulier pour braver les règles de sécurité», ou encore s’il «contourne délibérément les obstacles lui interdisant l’accès à une voie rapide» ;
In 99% of the cases a pedestrian would have to go over a barrier to end up on a highway, as part of regular traffic.
I'm not counting someone from a broken down car on the side of the road as a pedestrian, since those are covered by different laws.
Not only that but in any road accident the bigger participant is automatically the guilty party. So huge trucks are very very careful while grandma with her trolley of vegetables trundles merrily along.
Iwould think you would need to separate the rate of car-v-pedestrian accidents from injury-rate-given incident. You might even have to break down speed of incident to really understand if modern vehicles were actually safer or not.
Per that link, pedestrian fatalities had a sudden break in trend and skyrocketed right when motorcyclist deaths stopped climbing and flattened.
Wouldn't you expect the hypothesis of new vehicles increasing ped deaths show up in motorcycle fatalities too? It seems much more plausible from this baseline data that the introduction of the smartphone is more relevant: the skyrocketing happened at the precise time the smartphone took off, and smartphone ubiquity naturally wouldn't affect motorcyclist fatality (while new vehicle shapes would).
Of course, there are myriad other potential explanations, including the trend towards urbanization and walkable cities over the last decade and a half, but I don't see how you can conclude that the pedestrian fatality graph is useful evidence of the greater dangers of newer vehicle designs.
Which begs the real question: shouldn't we have continued to allow "driving a car well if you're going to be driving one" to have been a natural selection point...?
I'm not aware of any, which is a shame. I want to replace one of my two cars with an EV sometime late 2022 or early 2023. Unfortunately they all come with touchscreens and cellular connectivity. I want neither.
My 2002 Saturn LW200 had the best UI of any car I've ever owned. Everything was a mechanical button, lever, or knob and it had only two very-simple screens: a clock radio (segment LCD) and an odometer (VFD).
Do you see them as anti-features? My mom's newish car has backup cameras, lane guidance, and blindspot detectors, and those things alone have quieted the vast majority of my lifelong frustration at cities that force you to waste hours of your day piloting death machines just to go about your day-to-day. I still would never want to _live_ somewhere like that, but my visits to my parents have become significantly more pleasant through what I consider to be these common-sense safety features.
You can't avoid CANBUS anymore but if you go buy the base trim subcompacts from those brands the well to do parts of the internet turn up their noses at you should be able to find stuff without much or any technical bloat.
Spoken like a true boomer. New cars are much better at preventing harm than older cars are. They are objectively better in almost every way. I literally cannot fathom that HN users haven't transparencied this comment yet...
> this "long run" comparison of owning and repairing versus buying a new car is just silly. So many people have the incentive to get you to buy a new car, but practically no one has an incentive to tell you to take good care of the things you own so they last.
I don't think the comparison is so absurd. The result can vary a lot based on where you live - how hard the weather is on the car, how much a mechanic charges per hour, how strict the smog/inspection regulations are.
In San Francisco maintenance/repairs are $150/hour at an independent shop. A former colleague and I worked out that the 10+ year old used cars we both drove ended up costing almost exactly the same in depreciation and maintenance as leasing a new Subaru Outback. They only worked out cheaper overall because we could forego the comprehensive insurance required for a lease.
I'd switched to a job that required commuting more than 15k miles a year by the time mine failed its smog test and needed to be replaced (a CARB compliant replacement catalytic converter would have been almost as much as I'd paid for the car) so got another old used car. He ended up leasing when his car died.
That sounds almost as amazing as what I inherited once upon a time: an 1985 Oldsmobile Delta 88 Royale Brougham LS with dark silver fleck craptastic paint, chrome everything, limo tint, gutless 307 V8 LV2 motor with roller lifter, 4 mobster body-capacity trunk, predictable drifting characteristics, and seating for 5-6 Americans. It was once of the most comfortable cars ever, but the crushed merlot velour interior (as featured in a Traci Lords' film) created so much static, it's a wonder more gas station fires and localized lightning didn't occur.
Is it bad for the economy? The labour and supply chain for repair work must add up to an awful lot of people. It’s also going to be paying locals the bulk of the money, where buying a new car is often going to be sending the money off shore.
The economy as a whole isn't being harmed. US new car sales held steady at about 17M per year through 2019 before dropping in 2020 due to the pandemic and supply shortages.
Shade tree mechanic here,most my cars are 20 YO old. I just got a "new" car a 12 yo Twin turbo AWD BMW. I have to say the amount of "lifetime fluid" stickers on it is way to damn high. it needed all these lifetime fluids changed at 40k intervals but BMW made it that way so they wouldn't have to maintain all the fluids. NOW ME AND THE MAD SCIENTIST GOT TO PULL APART TORQUE CONVERTER BECAUSE IT WAS THE FIRST ONE EVER IN HISTORY TO INCLUDE A CLUTCH PACK.
> controversial opinion here but older cars teach you a healthy fear of operating a 2000lb rolling death machine.
Sure. And what about adding a giant huge metal sharp spike in the windshield pointing directly to the driver's forehead, while we're at it. That should teach people to drive safely.
Are you referring to non-collapsible steering columns? After all before collapsible steering columns presumably, following along this threads logic, the fear of being impaled made crashes non-existant.
We can also remove the seat belts.
Oh and 500Hp 8,000lb pick up trucks with 6ft tall front grills don’t accelerate fast enough, let’s put Tesla’s plaid tech in them so they can get to 90mph in seconds. Currently there’s far too much lag when 8,000lb trucks hit the gas to weave through traffic at 95mph.
Presumable Making these updates will give people the proper fear they need in order to drive safer and reduce accidents.
See this article by Jack Baruth on how badly the old Ford Panther platform vehicles such as the Mercury Grand Marquis and Lincoln Town Car perform in crashes. Those things are death traps in side impact crashes compared to more modern designs. Even the best driver can't avoid every collision.
Mine is 13 years old, a Mitsubishi Spyder Eclipse GT, and I love it. It currently has about 52,000 miles on the clock, and has never once failed to start during the dozen or so times I’ve used it in the last year - unlike my wife’s much newer car which we keep on a battery charger now as a matter of course.
These days, 260hp isn’t much of anything special, but back then it was the most powerful car I’d ever bought, and I still love the whine of the air, increasing in frequency, as I pull onto an empty freeway and put my foot down to get up to speed.
Over the years it’s needed a small amount of maintenance - new tires, timing belts etc. But nothing has gone wrong that isn’t expected to happen on the maintenance schedule. That reliability and the fact that it’s been paid for, for over a decade now, is just awesome.
Airbags everywhere, excellent brakes, not much rear visibility (but it’s a convertible, so the top is down more often than not), traction control, and a 6-cd changer [grin], what’s not to like :)
Having said all that, in a few years it’ll be time to move to an electric car, but I want to stave off that future as long as possible.
We have a 1999 Honda CRV with 66K miles on it (we bought it in 2007 with 48K miles on it). Insurance and maintenance cost us on average about $200/month. For the amount of driving we do, it just plain wouldn’t be worth spending more for a new car. We’re figuring when this car finally becomes too expensive to maintain, our next car will be no car, and we’ll just use rental/Zipcar/etc.
I have a 2003 250k mile 4Runner, and my maintenance calculation is about $1,500 per 50k miles (tires, oil, filters, brakes incl labor). Which comes out to 3 cents per mile, fuel is at 25 cents per mile assuming $4/gal and 16 mpg. I max out liability only insurance at $45 per month for 5k miles per year, so let us round that to 1 cent per mile.
So it comes out to 30 cents per mile plus my morbidity/mortality risk. Hard to justify a new car if I am happy with my current driving experience, which all I care about is CarPlay and air conditioning. I am hoping electric cars are fully tested and reliable by the time my car dies. Or someone steals it.
One thing that keeps me driving an older car (2002 Honda Accord) is the greatly increased total cost of ownership of newer vehicles. Whenever something needs replaced -- windshield, tires, whatever -- it's often dirt cheap, and the car itself is extremely reliable. On the other hand, my wife's newer Mazda seems to be a perpetual money sink. Everything is so much more expensive to replace. The windshield has special sensors, so it was super expensive to replace. Tires are a lot more expensive. (A nail impact that was just right to destroy the tire cost us close to $1000, but I guess a lot of that is admittedly due to the AWD requiring replacement of all tires.) For these newer cars, the initial cost seems to be a much smaller part of the TCO.
I agree with the safety concerns others have mentioned about older cars, and I would gladly pay more for safety. But I do feel a bit frustrated when getting the safety also requires a huge TCO increase for frivolous features. (E.g., are the automatic windshield wipers really worth the 4x cost bump at the glass shop?)
It depends what car you get. I have a 2014 Toyota Prius and it’s hit over 150,000k miles without more than basic maintenance. Not one part has broken. Fluids aside, it’s only needed one pair of brakes, two sets of tires, and five sets of wiper blades replaced in its lifetime.
This is a pretty common experience of Prius owners. There’s also a huge modding community for them, so it’s easy to find information about any part of them. There are even tutorials on how to replace bad cells in the battery pack. (Just don’t drop a wrench and cause a short.)
Might as well get a garage to weld on a cage driving such a notorious car. It might not be a major issue in your area, but you might one day park somewhere where this does become a major issue.
That might be more of a Honda/Mazda thing than an old/new one.
Hondas have a reputation for being fairly bulletproof and cheap to maintain. Mazdas have a reputation for being fun to drive and occasionally going "bang".
You might be pleasantly surprised by the TCO of a new Civic or Accord.
AWD vehicles need to have the same tread depth on all four tires to avoid differential damage but if the other three are still in good condition you can get the replacement shaved down to match. I have used that service from Tire Rack before and they do a good job.
Lots of talk about safety features and reliability in the thread.
But I wonder if some of it is lack of great visual differentiation among model years. Harder to tell cars apart and they don’t rust like they used to.
Less social pressure to get new car as harder to tell what’s new.
Obviously not impossible but not as stark as a 1990 from a 2000 car.
2010 and 2020 car don’t look that much different.
In the UK the (non-vanity) plates tell you which six months the car was registered so e.g. a plate AB03 CDE was registered in the first half of 2003, whereas UV71 XYZ is from the second half of 2021.
Thus most car owners in the UK can tell (unless you have vanity plates) roughly how old your car is.
Thats interesting. I wonder what the logic behind this is?
A neat experiment would be randomly issue vanity plates that change the year but look normal and see if there is a difference how long a person keeps the car. If having a plate that makes it appear you have a newer car makes you hang on to it longer.
The original non-dated UK registration system is still in use in Northern Ireland, letters based on county of registration followed by sequential numbers.
So a study might be able to look at mainland UK vehicle retention rates versus NI, though it would have to normalise for income and outgoings.
You aren't allowed a vanity plate that makes the car look newer, so 'SU51 100' (Susi) can't go on a car from before 2001. Vanity plates must fit a pattern of issue, you can't just ask for "SUSAN" (SUS 4N is from the 1970s or something though).
However, people do sometimes put older vanity plates on newer cars to hide the age.
For anyone who doesn't have a sub I'll summarize a few salient points people are missing. Most importantly new car sales and prices are at all-time high. The driver of growing car age is the higher quality and durability of cars in the last 20 years and people owning more cars per household. So people are not holding on to old cars and foregoing new purchases but rather doing both. Used car prices are also at all-time high.
The high prices are driven by the chip shortage decreasing supply. In 2019 there were 17 million light vehicles sold, and in 2020, there were only 14.5 million sold. The chip shortage/covid prevented 3 million cars from being manufactured, which drove up prices.
It will be a couple of years before this supply effect works through the system. It has nothing to do with consumer behavior choosing to purchase more new cars and driving up the price as a result of increased demand.
The biggest issue with with cars made in the last 25 years is the amount of plastic used in both the engine and interior.
As plastics age and go through heat/cool cycles the get brittle and easily fail. It’s infuriating to have to dismantle half the engine just to replace a $5 coolant elbow because GM decided to use a plastic one instead of metal.
I have four vehicles ages 22, 18, 14, 11 and one motorcycle at 43 years old. I personally do all maintenance on all my vehicles. I've never bought into the vehicle love affair like much of the marketing portrays automobiles today, I look at them more like you would look at at tool, like a screwdriver or hammer.
My Dad owned a GM dealership in the 70's. I grew up working in the parts department. Part of the business model were "genuine Delco parts" plus a very busy service department. So, low fixed cost with high variable cost. Somewhat akin to that cheap printer with expensive ink.
Then I read the March 1973 "Bicycle" issue of Scientific American, which measured efficiency in terms of Kilograms/Kilometers/KCalories. Back then bikes were about 28x more efficient than cars. Steve Jobs referred to that article when he declared computers to be a "bicycle for the mind". As for me: I dropped cars and bought a bike.
I had a Geo Metro, which was more motorcycle than car. It was a very dangerous to drive anywhere except on small, city streets (where it excelled). It was finally was too expensive to justify repairing, so I bought a bike - telling myself I'd never buy a car again, unless I could afford something of worth. Well, that was 17 years ago. Turns out where the Geo Metro excelled, a bicycle was even better.
I wonder if an Aptera would qualify as the Geo Metro of EVs? I haven't owned a car since 2008 - living in SF helped. Was commuting to Mt View with the SF2G group. There is one member of the group who's Twitter handle is "Electric cars are still cars" Be that as it may, I reserved an Aptera with a 1000 mile range. Feels less like a car and more like a flightless airplane.
We have 6 vehicles. There are nearly 4 drivers in my family. My youngest will finally start driving this summer.
We own all our vehicles so maintenance, insurance, and fuel are the only real costs of ownership.
Since I have lots of tools accumulated and skills learned over more than 40 years of driving I do a lot of my own maintenance and upgrades.
All but one of our vehicles has more than 230k miles on the odometer. The exception has 110k miles and is 6 years old. The other vehicles range in age from 10 years old to 46 years old. We bought 4 of these vehicles new, of the other two one was a gift and the other I bought at auction for a pittance.
I prefer older vehicles without all the safety stuff, electronics, etc. They are simple to work on and maintain and will last a long time without having to be molly-coddled. I do appreciate the skills needed by the new vehicle designers to fit all that crap under the hood, inside the dash, etc. and make it all work. The drawback is that this does make some maintenance work a lot more difficult than it should be as things have to be moved out of the way to fix relatively simple problems.
I don't see airbags and things like that as necessary features. I only have 3 vehicles that came with them and all 3 have had bags recalled.
As long as I have space to store the vehicles and the option to start and stop insurance coverage (shift from daily driver to stored vehicle) with 24 hours notice I will likely keep all of them since we own them.
I have a hard time getting excited about spending $30k or more for a vehicle that will monitor everything I do, how I choose to do it, where I go, etc. You will never own that vehicle like I own mine.
I am not one of those redneck dipshits who disables emission controls, lifts the body and buys larger tires. I use OEM parts for everything when they are available, aftermarket parts if they aren't. All my vehicles except one are or could be daily drivers for anyone. My wife and my kids drive them so they have to work right and be safe with no mechanical issues that could leave them in a bind.
Over the years I have had to upgrade my maintenance skills to be able to troubleshoot electronics, sensors, etc. That is probably the one thing that I appreciate most about newer vehicles, that I have been forced to learn new things and to buy new tools. Who doesn't like new tools?
I have also learned a lot about several manufacturers and the corners they cut or the extra steps they take to improve the ownership experience.
Cars are pretty great. Trucks are pretty greater.
I am excited to finally see wide adoption of electric vehicles. It can't come soon enough. I think Musk might have said that part of the reason he started building cars was to try to drive the old guard companies into a shift to electrics. With Ford, GM, Toyota, Honda, etc getting on board I think he has satisfied that goal and we will all benefit.
As someone who worked 40 years in the oil and gas business I just want to see all that ended. Regulate it out of existence or do as investment houses are doing and just cut off funding for new exploration.
Where would that leave all my older vehicles? Well, I would have great platforms for conversion to electrics or I could scrap them and let their materials become something else useful. Like the rocks, everything changes with time.
It actually isn't a contradiction because all the vehicles we own are safe when they are properly maintained and when the person driving has had appropriate driving training.
Airbags don't make you safer. They simply absorb and dissipate damaging energy thus preventing many serious injuries when drivers become involved in accidents.
Safe drivers drive defensively and practice traffic hazard and conflict recognition and avoidance which minimizes the likelihood that they will become involved in someone else's malfunction. You won't need those airbags.
I disagree with this based on my own personal experience. Maybe it would be better phrased to say that you're more likely to be involved in an accident.
Personally, my wife and I have commuted up to 37500 miles annually, each. That's about 75k miles annually on two vehicles. In more than 30 years of driving since we have been married we have owned and driven vehicles all over the US from the east to the west coast thru major cities, rural areas and off-road for recreation. Combined, I can document more than 1.5 million miles we have driven and I can say with confidence that too many of our fellow drivers on some of those roads were not in a condition to drive.
In all that time, we have only been involved in three accidents. All three of those accidents occurred in the last 5 years and involved the same vehicle. That vehicle was a 2013 VW Passat. It had all the fancy stuff on it to keep you safe in an accident. The main failure though that contributed to two of the accidents was an illumination failure. The headlights on that vehicle were narrow LED lights that even on high beams could not illuminate the highway in front of the vehicle far enough for the driver to react to objects or animals in the roadway when they are moving at highway speeds.
Modern slit lights do not have the illumination reach that older lights offer. In addition, modern lights may be keyed to your steering wheel so that when you turn the lights they follow thru the turn. Since the lenses on the lights have a sharp cutoff at the top they cannot illuminate relatively moderate slopes as you ascend hills. You are met with a sharp cutoff instead of being able to see up the hill you are driving over.
This results in you over-driving your headlights at highway speeds because you will travel farther than your lights can illuminate in the time it takes you to recognize a hazard in the road or beside the road. This is simply not safe.
Our Mazda has this problem.
The third accident involved another driver who had a red light and a distraction in their hand and they jumped into the intersection t-boning the car hard enough to knock the front wheel under it. That sent the car to the junkyard after a brief trip to the dealership to sell it into the dieselgate buyback since it was still drivable and qualified. Insurance totalled it the day before the buyback ended so we got lucky.
When we have encountered drivers who are distracted or obviously impaired I use the skills defensive driving taught me to create a gap to separate myself from the problem. If there is an opportunity then I have a passenger call 911 to report a dangerous driver.
I taught my wife and kids how to improve their driving using pin flags to mark a course on the back part of our property. They drove several vehicles with the goal being to understand where you are in space through the whole drive. I placed cans in the path and had them drive the course until they could consistently crush the can in any of our vehicles using either the driver or the passenger tire. That skill allows you to look at something like a parking spot or a gap between vehicles and know instinctively whether your vehicle will fit without issue. It also helps you understand your limitations at high speed on the highway when an object is in your lane. You have a feel for exactly where you can shift to avoid it without affecting any other drivers on the road.
I have tried to be a safe driver and to make sure my wife and kids are too. A safe driver is the most important thing that any vehicle can have in it. The driver needs to be aware of where they are, they need to be alert, and they need to be in a dependable vehicle.
Fancy gizmos, screens, airbags, touch-sensitive features, sensors to locate hazards in adjacent lanes - these are things that either distract a driver and make them less safe or they are things designed to mitigate the consequences of failing to be a safe driver and to save the lives of the people in their vehicles so that this person who couldn't be bothered to pay atten...
Depends on the technology and how well they're thermally managed. Lithium iron phosphate cells are starting to show up in lower-end EVs and those could last a very long time.
Really, the thing with old batteries isn't so much that they degrade (though a few cars had problems with it like the early Nissan Leafs), but rather that the technology is getting better all the time, and even if degradation isn't a factor, a twenty-year-old battery will be based on twenty-year-old tech, whereas newer cars will be have more range, charge more quickly, and be lighter.
Modern cars last a long time, regardless of the powerplant. Old cars having catastrophic mechanical failure doesn't drive ownership turnover - in fact the opposite is true for most vehicles, as it's easier and cheaper to address significant mechanical failure in say, an 80's Chevy pickup than a similar issues in 2010's chevy pickup. Turnover instead is primarily attributed to mounting maintenance/ownership costs that are primarily related to all the value-add features companies keep adding to keep up with joneses. In addition, "Catastrophic" Failures (eg Totalling) is much more prevalent not due to unreliability of ICE systems, but rather, the new safety standards that result in high replacement costs (crumple zones for example can turn even minor incidents into significant repair costs, even if it's not mechanically compromised). Those same pain points will be just as if not more present, no matter the powerplant, and the simplicity of electrical drivetrains will be offset by the high cost and short life of batteries (unless there's some revolution in battery tech on the horizon, which I certainly hope for, and is possible, but am not expecting to happen as a simple result of economies of scale).
So the drivetrains may well last longer, but that's not what drives first-owners of cars to trade/sell for a newer model, as drivetrains already well outlast most first owners desire to keep them.
The thing with EV cars, at least here in Europe, is that their batteries are incredibly expensive - and any damage to the battery, or anything related to the battery, will cost so much that the vehicle is often just condemned.
We actually have junkyards full of EV cars that are under 5 years old, because the battery or chassis got some damage, and it would cost $10k-$30k to replace.
While I'm glad they mentioned the increasing price of cars, one thing that they didn't mention is the rise of electric cars. My car is 9 years old, and I'm looking for a replacement soon. However, I'm holding off for a few more years so that there's additional electric chargers implemented, and for more competition in the BEV space.
Yes my mechanic ask me recently and that was my response. In Australia lower end electrics are very expensive still compared to typical mass market cars. Hoping we can squeeze a few more years out of our 14 year old car and see a change.
439 comments
[ 3.2 ms ] story [ 90.9 ms ] threadIt was still going pretty strong but vehicle tech advances rather quickly these days that after about a decade there is really a sizable improvement in safety.
I think it was not mandated into US law until about a decade ago, but some OEMs have offered it since 1987, like Mercedes Benz
Didn't have any airbags at all. Not illegal in the rest of the world but I think they didn't sell them in the US.
The UK, but it was the same model they sold everywhere that they sold them.
This 2009 Land Rover model had front, side, and overhead airbags, ESC, ABS, etc.
But the model I had didn't, and didn't anywhere it was sold. Do you think I'm mistaken about my own car or something?
So you are most certainly mistaken about the claim that it is sold "everywhere", although you have since edited that to be restricted to "where they sold them" which conveniently excludes all the places where it simply couldn't be sold.
I'm obviously not going to be mistaken about my own car, am I?
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Land_Rover_Defender#2012_updat...
Selling as late as 2016 with no air bags, in many Western first-world nations, obviously including such as the UK where it was built, but I think also France, Germany, etc.
In fact they even specifically say:
> However, safety regulations due for introduction in 2015 requiring minimum pedestrian safety standards and the fitment of airbags to commercial vehicles cannot be met without a wholesale redesign of the Defender.
Another source.
https://www.carbuyer.co.uk/reviews/land-rover/defender/sport...
Which says:
> it was never fitted with any airbags
And we can see when you edit your comments, because I already quoted them.
The original claim you wrote 'So either your vehicle was sold in no first-world nations, or you are indeed mistaken.' is clearly false.
It's funny that you bring up editing, because the single thing I was replying to was your original claim that your airbag-less vehicle was the same model they sold "everywhere" (which you later edited because of course the vehicle was illegal in a number of nations). I never contested that you bought some bizarrely outdated vehicle in the UK in 2009. If I edited a comment, I made it more accurate immediately, and it's incredibly strange that you think you've caught me out.
I truly don't care about your strange retro vehicle. But in this conversation it is so hilariously irrelevant to the context.
Yeah everywhere they sold the Defender, they sold it without airbags. That's always what I said, and it's true.
> I never contested that you bought some bizarrely outdated vehicle in the UK in 2009
You said 'your vehicle was sold in no first-world nations'. This a demonstrably untrue statement, because it was sold in at least the UK.
It's not as crazy as it sounds; with the front-impact ones, wearing your seatbelt works about as well, and you don't have to worry about Takata syndrome.
This was apparently because at that point, manufacturers could get out of putting in front airbags if they put in those automatic should belts. Not sure when that was tightened up.
A lot of the more recent improvements seem to be trying to compensate for either gross driver failures or much reduced visibility with modern vehicle designs. It will be interesting to see whether they end up significantly improving safety overall or just cancelling out the negative effects of less careful driving and less visibility.
Age is being used as a really sloppy proxy for safety features, when a lot of these things were completely standard 10 years ago. As mentioned in another post, a 2009 Range Rover came with every major safety feature.
https://www.forbes.com/sites/jimgorzelany/2018/05/11/newer-c...
[1] https://www.iihs.org/news/detail/new-study-suggests-todays-s...
[2] https://www.ghsa.org/sites/default/files/2021-03/Ped%20Spotl...
[3] https://www.theguardian.com/technology/2019/oct/03/collision...
IIHS is changing tests now to incorporate pedestrian safety tests. NHTSA is also considering the change.
It's design nonsense and the only reason it ever got this bad is the regulators are fully captured.
The airbags inside the car are meant to cushion the hard surfaces of course and the curtain bags are meant to keep people and their limbs in the protective passenger area when the car spins, but also they are acting as a counterforce and slow the speed of the person a little more gently, versus an instant stop to a solid object such as the dashboard, causing internal injuries as well as the external trauma.
Also airbags are a very good reason to wear a seatbelt - if you pop the airbags while colliding at relatively slow speeds, you'll probably lean forward a bit from the deceleration only to be punched in the face by the bag (and probably get some vertebrae renovated).
So while installing external airbags to cushion the pedestrian impact sounds like a good idea it probably isn't, as the bag suddenly expanding from the direction of the vehicle would simply add to the energy and "punch" the pedestrian away from the car at the 200mph at which an airbag expands.
Lastly, I'm all in for the gel from Demolition Man, why aren't we funding it?? Would it come in different scents and colors? :-D Really the car could one day - when detecting an unavoidable collision - spray out a foam or expanding gel that would cushion the surfaces and also decelerate the fall of the pedestrian - I'm thinking Final Fantasy Spirits Within -soldiers drop gel"?
It seems like such an airbag could be used to lessen the impact of vehicle-to-vehicle collisions as well. Perhaps have multiple inflators so the car can select air pressure based on the projected force of impact.
Airbag suits are available now for motorcycle riders, external car airbags would kind of be just a larger (potentially more complex) variant of the same idea.
Consequences for injuring or killing pedestrians only seem to enter the equation when serious negligence is involved, like when drivers are intoxicated, or when there is a hit-and-run.
"When a car strikes a cyclist, the initial impact causes severe lower-body trauma, but it’s also likely to sweep that person’s legs out from underneath them. This is significant, because as the rider slides up the hood, they’re scrubbing speed and, with it, some impact force. An SUV or truck, by contrast, is taller, so the initial impact is likely to target the pelvis or even the chest. “That momentum is carried through your body,” says Hu. In addition, the front-end shape of a vehicle is vital. More than 85 percent of fatalities among pedestrians and cyclists hit by cars and light trucks involve impacts from the front of the vehicle, according to 2017 data from the National Highway Transportation Safety Administration. Modern truck and full-size SUVs favor blocky, muscular styling at the front end, rather than the more gently sloping transition from grille to hood that cars and some compact SUVs have. Instead of sliding onto the hood when hit by a truck, the rider’s pelvis and torso rotate with a twisting, tearing motion. With a squared-off front end, Hu says, “it’s basically the person wrapping around the vehicle.”"
https://www.outsideonline.com/2411345/suvs-trucks-deadly-cyc...
Why isn't the same true for pedestrians and bicyclists?
https://www.iihs.org/news/detail/study-highlights-rising-ped...
I know an older couple with two vehicles from 2008 with 36k and 54k miles on them. They are in great shape, always parked in the garage at home, etc. While their natural life might be 150k, it's very likely they will be in a junkyard before then. Part availability becomes an increasing concern.
From an environmental standpoint, old cars were manufactured under less stringent emissions standards. At a certain point, the emissions required to manufacture a car are more than offset by the marginally lower emissions from a new vehicle.
From an environmental standpoint, the benefit would be on vehicles where parts get more difficult to find or the owner deems the vehicle to be lacking sufficient safety features (and possibly both, a couple hundred dollar repair prompting the owner to retire the car).
I don't have any numbers to estimate the impact, it's my shower thought for how to maximize asset utilization and minimize vehicle deaths.
What does any of that have to do with the environmental standpoint?
The most extreme example would be a car with a catastrophic failure that will happen at 200k miles, but the owner only drives 1k miles per year. Parts will become an issue far before the useful life of the vehicle is up. The resale value would be basically 0 after 50 years because everything is so out of date, from safety features to creature comforts.
I'm personally driving a 2010 Civic which just crossed 100k miles, and a 2009 CR-V with 140k miles. The Civic will likely be sold in the next few years pursuing an upgrade to safety while it would still have a ton of life left in it. It'll probably go to some high school kid who is learning to drive, and its end of life will more likely be due to a crash.
I just put money into the Civic for wheel bearings (likely needed because it sat most of 2020), transmission fluid, and brake fluid, and the CR-V checked out fine at its oil change. In ~75k miles, we have only done front suspension, tires, wheel alignments, oil changes, and a set of brakes on the CR-V. It spent a couple years in a town with terrible roads, which I point to as the primary reason for the suspension breaking.
Most people are not letting "never in a lifetime" frequency events have more than tertiary influence over major purchasing decisions.
ICE is proven to be if maintained.
Battery maintenance costs may prove to be the achilles heel of Electric Car ownership, which is why so many people are pushing for a post ownership society / CAAS (car as a service) model instead of owning a car
This is great for dense city dwellers that don't use their car much, but horrific for suburbanites, rural Americans, and people that drive more than 15k miles per year.
Reduction in ownership is happening everywhere. Devices, media, now cars and homes. It's not a good trend for many consumers. We'll all wind up as serfs.
Also if you are driving a high end one, like a Model S, that changes the game as well.
I have yet to see any manufacture come out with a battery replacement program that is economical. Look at Prius as an example, battery goes out in one of them it is basically totaled from a economic stand point unless you DIY the replacement with "unauthorized" batteries. I believe the Chevy volt is the same way
Internal combustion engines however have no problems lasting for 10, 15, 30+ years if they are maintained. I know many people that have cars over 15 years old.
It is yet to be seen how long battery packs of different design will last. Or if the drive to get more and more range out of these battery packs will push mfg's to squeeze more range sacrificing longevity as competition in the past increases . That is going to be a problem.
This planned obsolescence model we have for cell phones, to cars with shorter and shorter product life spans is not good for anyone, not the environment, not poor people that generally depend on older used cars which makes electric uses cars at ticking time bomb...
the solution can not be "just replace your $40-$60K car when the battery dies like your iPhone" that is moronic
The average American drives 16 miles each way to work. (Pre-pandemic, so it's even lower now). The kind of person who'd buy a $2k car can get by with very little battery capacity.
My 2013 car has 35,000 miles on it. Beautiful car (Hyundai Genesis sedan). 8 airbags.
But it lacks a rear-view camera and doesn't have the modern stuff like collision avoidance that pretty much comes standard nowadays.
Crutchfield will sell you a plug and play adapter from your factory radio to the new radio's pin outs. They do the wiring so you don't have to solder anything.
Having navigation and a backup camera definitely made it much nicer to drive.
https://www.crutchfield.com
I have an older 2005 Honda Element and the double-DIN OEM CD player no longer works. Both rotary encoders for volume and tuning malfunction, and it will eject any CD placed inside it.
So, I have been looking at these on Amazon as a replacement:
https://www.amazon.com/Double-Stereo-CarPlay-ABSOSO-Receiver...
I will probably pay more for a better quality version, but it literally is a double-DIN touchscreen with Carplay support and a backup camera for $118.
There is no shortage of various head-units with backup cameras for cars that did not come factory equipped, and quite affordble.
I'd benefit from having a newer car in some ways, but I actively don't want any specific new model I've seen for years because of their awful uses of technology. Go back to making cars that are about driving -- safely, efficiently and comfortably -- without all that other junk, and I'll throw money at you.
But still not too much money, because I don't think fully electric vehicles and the infrastructure to support them are quite there yet, and anything using an ICE or hybrid tech feels like it's only a stepping stone to the fully electric world that we'll probably be living in a decade from now.
I can't imagine why anyone would want to buy the kinds of cars that the big manufacturers are producing today unless they had no choice, and I'm not surprised at all that more people are keeping their existing vehicles for longer.
I'm not a car expert, but I'm guessing the dearth of driving in the past year has also affected this. Anecdotal, but I've put barely any miles on my 2013 car in well over a year, which I see as extending its life. I'm noticing my dealership has really amped up their direct-mail pleas to "come in for service," suggesting this revenue stream has dried up as cars stay in driveways.
[1] https://www.edmunds.com/car-buying/where-does-the-car-dealer...
I think another thing impacting this may be high car prices making people wait until things "cool down." A lot of folks I know are talking about how high car prices, home prices, really all prices are becoming. Some people may want to wait it out to see if this is permanent or just an aberration due to the pandemic.
Getting a rental for a few days just to double check that I was right. Rental market sucks right now because they dumped inventory and demand has gone up, but still better to throw away $400 so I can be sure.
Some will even let you keep it overnight to "think about it."
I don't need the absolute latest and greatest computer safety features. Some of them sound nice but if it has side+passenger airbags and seatbelts then that is good enough for me.
On the flip side, one of my family members gets a new car every year through some kind of special leasing program. Not only does that seem wasteful from a number of angles but how do you not get attached to a car you love driving? Once I find a car I like then I don't want to give it up unless maintenance becomes prohibitively expensive and even then it can be tough.
- No bluetooth.
- No touchscreens.
- Really, no screens at all.
- Cabled audio input.
A rearview camera is a good thing, except it still manages to make the car worse overall because the manufacturers somehow can't stop themselves from using the screen to display other things that should have been displayed in another way.
Manufacturers definitely went wrong putting important controls in the touch screen. That’s a usability nightmare. I’d consider the rest to be personal preference.
As far as the "questionable utility goes", I frankly love it. I love just walking up to my car and having it unlock for me. Sure, it's not much, but it's kind of the equivalent of Touch ID or Face ID on a phone these days. Sure, entering a PIN code isn't the hardest thing in the world, but it's the little things that make life just a smidge less annoying, right?
You didn't address my point regarding their ubiquity now, so I feel like you kinda decided to only address half my point...
I'm not sure I'd consider permanent connectivity and the related telemetry and OTA updates to be personal preference. These are often being used in ways contrary to the owner's or driver's interests, from invading privacy to "licensing" vehicle features that can be disabled later, and they come with significant security and safety risks.
They maintain value because a Sienna that's had an easy 100k miles with by the book maintenance is in much nicer shape and inherently has more life left than a Pacifica that was rode hard and put away wet over the same time period and distance.
Matter of perspective.. the only thing you list that I'd consider a concern to investigate is the "dash lit up like a chrismas tree". Everything else you mention is cheap replacement work.
The warning lights could be just a few cheap sensors but could also be very expensive ECU replacements. So that one I'd have to dig deeper but the rest wouldn't bother me to buy such a car and fix it up in a weekend.
I might spend $1500 on my 12 year old car (which is "only" worth 4200 according to KBB), instead of spending lot more money to get a different used car with unknown issues or a hefty monthly payment.
Theft premium stays the same, even though replacement cost has gone down and it's less valuable as a target. You'd think other cars becoming safer on average would decrease the risk of getting into accidents at their fault and at my fault, but the comprehensive premium stays the same on a now older car.
I find it hard to believe that auto thieves somehow avoid the equally dense town 1hr down the highway.
Same here. Bought a Volvo which is more expensive and has a more powerful engine than the Opel that I had before for 16 years, I have even added some options to the insurance coverage compared to before, but now I pay 300$ less than before => of course I'm happy, but it's weird, didn't expect this... .
Maybe the car's brand has as well something to do with it? Maybe some statistics show that for some reason Opel drivers cause more damages or whatever... . Misterious... .
Assuming we're talking economic cars (Honda, Toyota, Mazda, etc), it is very difficult to imagine spending $3K a year in maintenance. Maybe once in a decade if you're super unlucky.
These are cars that'll go on nearly forever on just an oil change a year (less than $100) and belts and tires every so-many years (depending how much you drive).
There is no math in the world that'll make a new car cheaper to own and operate than an old reliable brand car. If you enjoy newer cars, enjoy! But it won't be cheaper.
It can never be cheaper to have a new car. Do the math objectively and this is clear.
It can be more predictable, if you value that. Lease a new car, you know exactly what you're paying every month and for how long. Sure. But it'll be a lot more than an old car.
> You can believe that if you want
I don't believe, I have all my car expenses tracked since the early 90s so I know what I spend. In those 30 years I've mostly had cheap reliable old cars and a few new cars. The new cars have their joy, but they are a huge money pit. Currently my newest car is 17 years old and the oldest is 33 years old.
No new cars for me ever again, I let others pay the depreciation so I can get nearly-free transportation.
If you wanted cheap transportation, there's nothing cheaper to own than a ~$3K-4K used Honda/Mazda/Toyota. You obviously cannot have 1K/year in depreciation on a car that cost so little. New cars will be guaranteed to depreciate way more than that though.
The strategy for cheap transportation is buy that reliable car for 3-4K, drive it for ten+ years with minimal maintenance, insure for liability only. At the end of the years you can sell it for pretty much same as the buy price if you kept it clean. You can easily verify this by looking at craigslist prices for, say, a Honda Civic from the 90s to the 00s. A clean running car will only depreciate to a certain point and no more. If you buy it at the bottom of the depreciation curve you won't lose any money in depreciation. For some models, if you hold them for a while, it'll actually appreciate.
A Citroen is not a Honda/Mazda/Toyota. With an esoteric car like that, I don't doubt parts are expensive and reliability is low.
Your experience may be that used cars are cheap. My experinece over 20 years is that’s not always the case. I’ve had good used cars and awful used cars, the awful ones costing more than my current lease even before you get into the less concrete value of reliability and comfort.
I don’t deny that used cars can be cheaper. I simply state that’s not always the case.
Your calculation is silly and so many people fall into this trap. If you want to calculate whether a repair is worth it you have to either calculate cost per mile or cost per month. If a repair costs 1000€ and buying a new car would get you 200€ monthly payments and the repaired car survives 5 months then you just broke even and every month after that is profit. Your new car is never going to make you a profit.
The only thing you lost is the opportunity cost of not driving a new car.
When people say "where the cost of the repair exceeds the value of the vehicle." what they really mean is that they want a new car and there is nothing wrong with that but it is absolutely not cheaper than maintaining the old car a little bit longer.
I don’t think they’re saying “get a new car with a monthly loan.”
That's hardly a catastrophic failure, it'll just leak oil and you can schedule repairs at convenience. Having replaced a few, it's also a cheap part.
Friday afternoon. Although to be fair it was gray ATF smoke and not steam.
I stopped and asked the guy what was up because I probably could have helped if it was easy and the details of the situation favored doing so.
Turns out "muh million mile 4Runner" had sprung a leak in the transmission cooling plumbing. Based on the age of the vehicle I decided it would be better for him to get it towed than have me attempt a field repair so I lectured him on the basics of how an automatic transmission works and why he would be maxing an expensive gamble with bad odds if he were to pour a couple quarts in it and try to make it a few miles to where he was going rather than tow it.
https://www.theguardian.com/environment/green-living-blog/20...
The footprints can be reduced at scale over time, whereas these cars will be continuously producing more pollution as they age.
Which arguably supports driving older cars longer because not only does it reduce the overall frequency of car manufacturer, it also pushes that manufacturing process further into the future when the environmental impact of manufacturing a replacement would be lower.
Pardon me, but isn't that the definition of 'discounting'?. As in, you're ignoring that portion of the carbon footprint.
Totally wrong, it's only 20%
Think about it - if most of emission wad in production, electric cars would make no sence, they have higher production footprint and lower running footprint
https://www.europarl.europa.eu/news/en/headlines/society/201...
New cars aren't, or at least weren't, always this massive financial blunder people claim.
If it ends up costing you a few grand more per decade, why not lease, live within bumper to bumper warranties, and create the vehicles people actually seem to want, used ones.
https://www.greencarreports.com/news/1129864_nissan-leaf-lea...
Basically unobtainium lease rates outside of USA. In Canada, I'm seeing ~US$400/month for 60 month lease on a Leaf, and 40% more on a 3y lease: https://www.leasecosts.ca/en/cars/nissan/leaf-s-electric/202...
I feel like leasing in the UK is not a good deal, at least to me. I think a fair amount of people outside of tech get a company car allowance that probably props up prices a bit - I don't see why anyone else would pay these rates unless they absolutely must have a new car Vs a used one
All told I am probably spending about 1/2 or less what you are per decade by swapping leases every 2.5 years vs buying new and keeping it until it’s not worth maintaining. And that’s with buying nice new cars and always getting it repaired at the dealership. Which conversely means you can also drive a nicer model at the same price.
New cars remind you every year how much you paid for them....
The usual boneyard model these days immediately cut off the high-value parts for themselves (cat converters, rims, batteries or tires if they're newer, maybe body parts), drop it on cinder blocks for 3 months for U-pullers to take off other parts, and then crush them.
(This is why I buy mass-model Toyotas, easy to fix, always spare parts, always a buyer)
https://www.consumerreports.org/buying-a-car/people-spending...
Well…sort of. As the article details, there’s a lot at the top of the market that skews that average upwards. But even then, I don’t think you can get into a Honda Civic for less than $20,000. And good luck buying an F-150.
But also it’s remarkable how long cars last now. A 2010 car is still probably in fantastic shape. (My parents’ Camry sure is.) And while the new safety features are very useful (c’mon, dad, buy the new car, you need that blind spot warning), if the car ain’t broke, why replace it?
Note inflation.
I still have my 2003 Golf TDI that I bought brand new for CA$ 30K (all-in). In 2021 that would be the equivalent of CA$ 41K.
* https://www.bankofcanada.ca/rates/related/inflation-calculat...
Nowadays Golfs (sadly no diesels) are in the CA$ 22-28K range (plus fees/taxs):
* https://www.vw.ca/en/models/new-vehicles/golf.html
Inflation has been exceptionally, historically low for over a decade.
So at least part of the reason would be improvements in sharing reusing resources between models increasing the economies of scale.
In general, car manufacturers also removed stuff people don't care from lower models like better rear-suspension. You also save costs by going electronic e.g. the steering wheel isn't connected to the wheels anymore, it just tells them to turn by wire. Same for the transmission, that's why cars are getting rid of the transmission lever in the middle and using weird buttons instead : it isn't actually connected to the transmission box anymore. This also extends to removing physical buttons/volume knobs.
Nominal median household income in 2019 was $69k, compared to $42k in 2003, for an increase of 64%[1]. The price inflation figure that the parent comment shared is about a 36% increase in nominal dollars.
Using the parent comment's inflation and ignoring his claimed 25% nominal price decline for the Golf, this means that a new Golf costs a dramatically lower portion of median income.
Whoever told you that real median income has been negative since 2003 has badly misled you. I suggest doing a quick spot-check when you hear a new figure, as these figures are very, very easy to find.
[1] https://www.statista.com/statistics/200838/median-household-... The figures are denominated in 2019 dollars, so I converted the 2003 household income figures to 2003 dollars to get the nominal comparison we're discussing. I used the parent comment's inflation figure for consistency.
I hope to keep my electric car for at least 10 years
I own a Peugot iOn (rebadged Mitsubishi i-MiEV) manufactured in 2012, so it's 9 years old. I bought it second hand, and the service record shows it's needed zero maintenance (aside from tires). I have not needed to perform any maintenance in the ~2 years I've owned it. I'm not in any way recommending this specific car (although it suits me perfectly); but it shows that even a fairly early electric car like this is 10-year capable. The only downside has been the expected gradual decrease in range.
I've also owned a Tesla Model 3 for 16 months, and it's been maintenance and trouble free. I'm not denying that some people have problems with them, however that's not been my experience, nor the experience of the two other people I know who own one.
I probably plan to keep the Tesla for many years, so hope my trouble-free motoring continues :)
The most trouble-free cars I still go for are used Lexus sedans, especially those driven previously be senior citizens. Not always the coolest but man I never have to worry about anything on it.
[0] https://jalopnik.com/teslas-removal-of-features-on-used-cars...
That said, you will need to wait like 7 more years until you start seeing 10 year old Model 3s.
how long you keep a car is your decision. if you like it, and you're willing to pay for regular maintenance, then keep it. this "long run" comparison of owning and repairing versus buying a new car is just silly. So many people have the incentive to get you to buy a new car, but practically no one has an incentive to tell you to take good care of the things you own so they last.
And new cars arent always better. That nice collision avoidance/lane keeper and camera system? that was implemented as a countermeasure for increasing A and B pillar size after regulatory agencies decided too many americans were getting crushed to death in roll-over accidents. collision avoidance was literally the only way auto manufacturers could keep you out of a manslaughter charge thanks to the absolute byzantine nightmare of info-tainment systems that also do things like climate control.
controversial opinion here but older cars teach you a healthy fear of operating a 2000lb rolling death machine. no infofainment means they are safer for the driver, and no nanny-state A pillars mean you arent doing 80 in a 65 quite as often.
I own a 2000 mercury grand marquis. its a v8 so it inspires me to bipedal transportation pretty often with its fuel enconomy. the biggest problem I have with the car is my coworkers nicknaming me "the don" for driving a murdered-out land yacht but its what i like.
I've never heard this. Anywhere I can read more about this?
You do repair work in the desert don't you? I mostly agree with your sentiment. However in the rust belt we spray corrosive agents all over our cars and within 5 years loosening half of the fasteners takes 10 times what you are probably familiar with.
Right before the pandemic, I got rid of a 22 year old Honda del Sol. But it had been garaged for about the previous 10 winters. The mechanics at the dealer always went to look at it because they basically weren't on the roads any longer in New England.
It's around 325k now, I sold it to an acquaintance.
I ran into a local at the feed store who had one, and chatted him up. Turns out he has a whole little fleet of them. Easy to work on, run forever, cheap, and lots of spare parts around.
Can confirm this. Can't remember the last tine I saw a del Sol.
Cars should operate for no more than 10 years per climate. It evens out the heat-death and salt-death processes for max lifespan.
Yeah, my tires are old, but they don’t sit in 105F sun either. None of my interior panels have curled up or dried out either. My (electric) coolant pump hasn’t died yet because, well, it doesn’t run as much.
Ask anyone who works in the tire industry outside of sales and they will tell you that unless your tire was really, really abused or sat in the desert sun all the time 6yr is nothing and you should inspect the tire if you want to get an idea of how degraded it is.
Source: friends at cooper.
Personal anecdote time: Over the last year I went through a two and a half sets of old tires that I accumulated over the years for my van. I was intentionally doing burnouts daily to get through old stock as I planned to (and did) get new ones once I exhausted the old stockpile.
The only tires that had noticeably hardened and performed poorly (but oh boy did they do good burnouts) were the newest of the bunch and from 2016. The oldest ones were from 2009 and the half set was from 2012.
I got too far into this before realising you were referring to cars, not people. It holds up well.
It did have me wondering how early you learned to drive.
Most all of my vehicles have been 10+ year old vehicles, gently used, and bought for a great price from some elderly person who no longer drives/can drive or from a relative selling their parents/grandparents old ugly car they inherited and don't want. The older designs are often geared at making them easily maintainable vs new designs. This is shifting a bit and you're not starting to get in the early 2000s unless you want to get something much much older.
You do have to worry about seals, gaskets, rubber parts that have dry-rotted/cracked etc. or start to fail but the rest of the vehicle is usually in fantastic shape from my experience. I see many vehicles 10+ years old with less than 50k miles on them. It's probably hard to find anything like this any more and I really hope the pandemic doesn't inspire everyone to start picking these older used options long term because then it's going to get more expensive for me to find good reliable cheap cars.
I'm curious about this, can you explain more?
The more likely you are to survive putting the car on it's roof, the less you think about avoiding it.
I come back to my original anecdote, helmets is not something that consciously effects my driving. Not only that, unless a road biker biking for exercise is going super chill, it’s hard to notice the a helmet or not. And second, the prevalence of helmets, the prevalence of bikers and the regional road layout all probably effect general driving behaviors around hikers. I’m skeptical this effect is universal, but sure it apparently happened in the area of Europe under conditions studied.
This isn’t even the original paper, but one responding to another paper saying the original paper was wrong. I can’t read that original paper because it’s paywalled.
From skimming the article it looks like the effect is not even at p of 0.05. But i was a bit unclear on what exactly that p value was referring to and whether they had also tested many other hypothesis after the fact, a p-hacking issue.
There’s many questions I have about the road and locations and regional factors.
2) Road rage and resentment against bikers is real. There many drivers that act as psychopaths and will yell and haze bikers.
3) had people read the study before downvoting they would realize the study itself state it was a hotly contested topic and was in fact a response to another paper claiming they were wrong.
I don’t think someone asking if there is flaws to that study is someone that should be downvoted.
This was a weird statement since the article doesn’t seem to have any problem with people keeping cars longer.
> Im in automotive maintenance and repair
> but practically no one has an incentive to tell you to take good care of the things you own so they last.
Mechanics would love you to buy cars that cost $2000 for a headlight change, rather than maintain your 2002 Honda with regular maintenance and responsible driving.
BMW X5 rear lights - specifically the fibre optic stuff.
Jaguar brakes, or cam belt (chain?) on the v12.
They seem pretty happy when my Corolla needs some work.
Not as easy to make an informed choice about cars. The high incidence of rollovers for SUVs comes to mind. Apparently consumers had no idea that the Ford Bronco (as an example) was as deadly as it was.
I agree, it would be nice if we allowed for relaxed safety on cars as long as they were in their own category — sort of like dune buggies or something so consumers knew the trade-offs they were making.
But it's funny you mentioned that - dune buggies with roll bars are great for rolling over and keeping you safe. On the other hand, most widely available sport convertibles are not.
Although I wouldn't be opposed to motorcycles being outlawed - I can't even imagine an America where this happens.
So what else can you possibly do?
Why would you be okay with them being outlawed? Just because it doesn't affect you?
I can see why you may feel offended, but I don't think the parent post deserves your anger.
Stating a lack of opposition to the removal of those isn't just "not caring" is actively taking a stance that you believe those rights have no value. I think requesting justification for that stance is reasonable and not an expression of "anger".
I'll bite.
When I was 16, I REALLY wanted to own a motorcycle. I thought they were the coolest.
Luckily, I was pretty poor - so I wouldn't have money for any such thing until I moved from my small town to get a job in Boston. There, I made friends with someone whose father owned a business that put people back together after motorcycle accidents. In just a couple of minutes, he convinced me of how unsafe they actually are. Despite the fact that I think motorcycles are cool as shit - it's hard to argue they are "less safe" than cigarettes for 18 year-olds (or for anyone).
Also, now that I'm older, I definitely wouldn't mind if they were banned on residential streets. At least the ones that are noisy as hell.
So - it's a mix of:
1) It wouldn't be out of line for the Government.
2) It honestly seems in-line for the Government (even if I don't really agree it's what the Government should be doing).
3) It wouldn't affect me personally.
4) Personally, it would actually be a plus since I'm older now and I can't stand the noise.
So as I said - I'm not going to vote to ban motorcycles - and I can't imagine it ever happening - but if it did - you won't see me out in the streets protesting.
However regarding your points in turn:
1 & 2. I don't think nannying is what the government should be doing. I agree that seems to be the modern character of government though, at least where I live.
3. Obviously would affect me. :-P
4. I can't stand the noise either. I haven't modified my bike exhaust.
Most affected I think though would be the "uberEats-alike" delivery services as they seem largely run on the back of scooters, although ebikes are becoming popular too, though no less risky really.
Aside: if you still think motorcycles are cool, review what aspect of your risk profile precludes them. Maybe ride offroad, where traffic is much less a thing. If tarmac speed is the cool factor, you could go to a track. Modern MotoGP riders do both so you'd be in good company!
Just don't try to emulate their speed capability! (By the time you are good enough to ignore this advice, you will know it...)
A. Motorcycles are hitting many things causing everyone's insurance to go up. But here at least, motorcycles and riders are insured differently to cars, as you'd expect with differing %chance vs damage outcomes. So not true.
B. The mysterious group "Everyone" is at fault hitting motorcycles too much, causing everyone's insurance to go up. Which seems... fair?
Under those circumstances I can see how "other people riding a motorcycle" makes your premium go up.
I don't quite agree that the "odds of a collision remain constant" over time. Motorcycles take less space for one. But obviously, being subject to more damage has a selective effect.
However in any case even if the selective trend is applied to maximum, holding to the assumption of safe/damage for riding-vs-driving means that the premium will have some increase vs a "all car" world.
But I live in a world where other people affect me in so many ways that I see this as another similar effect. Damn miners stealing my gaming GPU cards...
… which increases the weight the pillars need to support, which causes the pillars to get thicker, &c.
We’ve had it so long that even though I’m almost 30, it’s the vehicle I learned how to drive in. Its nicknames at the office are "Clifford the Big Red SUV" and "The Lunch Bus".
I don't buy this. It is simply a competitive advantage enabling those systems, plus being software-heavy, they do scale well. Thicker pillars are not a bad thing. Visibility is not appreciably limited by them either. If that was the case we would have a significant differential in crash statistics between the trims of the same cars with and without those systems. They would have different safety ratings.
> no infofainment means they are safer for the driver,
Unless you have data, I strongly doubt this too. No infotainment means people will handle their phone more often for navigation, music, calls etc. Stuff like CarPlay don't even allow time seeking sliders on music interfaces, they are much less distracting than full fidelity mobile interfaces.
> older cars teach you a healthy fear of operating a 2000lb rolling death machine
By that token motorcycles would teach you a healthy fear of operating without a chassis, and thus a safer vehicle?
One Hundred Percent inaccurate. I can't see shit out of my 2014 crossover when turning to check blindspots, compared to my 90s trucks and cars I've driven. Hell, backup cameras are mandated on all new cars in the US (they are very useful, but it's also because you can't see out of your own car).
>By that token motorcycles would teach you a healthy fear of operating without a chassis, and thus a safer vehicle?
I think driving a motorcycle creates safer drivers, absolutely. I take the stance when driving, turning, merging, etc. that at any moment, any car near me is going to do something stupid. Either not see my lane-change signal, or cross the stop-sign despite it being my turn, etc.
Every person who has proactively described that level of defensive driving (that I have talked to in conversation) had at one point or another been a motorcycle rider.
I learned to adjust my blind spot to be two lanes over so that I can see anything next to me in my mirrors. Checking my blindspot means looking directly out the window so that pillars don't get in the way. It's similar to how trucks do it, since they can't see out the back.
Something you may want to look into -- adjusting your blind spot so you don't have to look at your pillar.
They really do! If you want to know what it's like transitioning from my 1980's compact SUV into my gf's 2021 compact SUV, don one of those cheap Halloween masks you wore as a kid and leave it on as you go about your business the rest of the day. Steel-toed shoes would make a great complement.
> By that token motorcycles would teach you a healthy fear of operating without a chassis, and thus a safer vehicle?
If you're referring to a perceived lack of concern for personal safety among a subset of motorcyclists, try handing one them the keys to a Bugatti Veyron and see if their behavior improves.
Psychological issues with this demographic aside, would you be willing to ride an ordinary bicycle at freeway speeds if you were able? If yes, do you think you would spend much time looking at your phone while doing so?
-Anthony Jeselnik
The two are not necessarily connected except through premise.
Which I never understood, because it really just makes me want to pick up my phone and use the slider there, which is far more dangerous.
Someone like you was probably saying the same thing about ABS on a BBS back in 1996.
These features get implemented in the higher end segments of the market and then adoption plateaus.
Most people are not going to spend thousands of dollars to have a marginally better chance of a avoiding a "less than once in a lifetime" type accident. ABS is even more useful than that and its adoption plateaued before the feds mandated it.
Someone like me said ABS is purely a competitive advantage feature despite the fact that its adoption in mainstream cars struggled? That person must be rather incoherent.
> ABS is even more useful than that and its adoption plateaued before the feds mandated it.
Let's not overgeneralize the competitive advantage angle to all safety features, that would be strawmanning. Stuff like lane keep assist, adaptive cruise control are very different beasts than ABS. They have been popular features in no small part because they also offer comfort, and have luxurious connotations e.g. like Tesla's autopilot. Besides they've been cheaper to add at lower trims as defaults because like I said they are mainly software driven features and therefore the costs scale well, especially considering the vertical integration between luxury and mainstream car brands. E.g. it only costs the windshield camera and the 2 sensors to add the auto breaking feature to a Honda, when you already have the software of an Acura.
Yes, because that's how people work. Nobody was driving unsafely before, because they were afraid of their cars rolling over.
No, that's not how they work. They just died at higher rates.
Would you look at that!
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Motor_vehicle_fatality_rate_in...
Turns out unsafe cars killed more people and when we started making them really safe, they stopped killing as many people, despite people driving more: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Motor_vehicle_fatality_rate_in...
From the same article you referenced:
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Motor_vehicle_fatality_rate_in...
Passengers would be inconvenienced, but basically every phone-related crash would be prevented.
Snapchat was not worth my cousin's life.
More than a few pedestrians walk and use their phone, walk right out in the traffic, or other situations (some hilarious walking right into poles and getting laughed at on the internet.
I know in a few nations this may be a hard concept, but here in the US, it is absolutely NOT true that "pedestrians always have the right of way"... no no no
In these cases, you can be run over and you (or your family) will have no legal recourse against the driver. Zero, nada, zilch. So in the legal sense, it is not true that a pedestrian always has the right to exist at any point on the earth without being run over.
In a moral sense, perhaps every driver has an obligation to try not to run over pedestrians. That might create a “right” in some moral/ethics frameworks, but it doesn’t exist as a legal concept in my state.
The exceptions are street crossings or purely pedestrian streets, which have to be marked as such.
I don't expect this to be different anywhere in the world, since most paved roads are paved for vehicles, you don't really need pavement that much for pedestrians (well, you kind of need it for pedestrian with baby strollers or wheeled luggage & co).
"Le piéton est l'usager le plus protégé par le code de la route : il a, quoiqu'il arrive, toujours la priorité sur la chaussée"
> Pour un piéton victime d’un accident, on retiendra faute inexcusable s’il «franchit des glissières de sécurité pour traverser une voie à grande circulation (alors qu’un passage souterrain existe à côté)», s’il «fait un effort particulier pour braver les règles de sécurité», ou encore s’il «contourne délibérément les obstacles lui interdisant l’accès à une voie rapide» ;
In 99% of the cases a pedestrian would have to go over a barrier to end up on a highway, as part of regular traffic.
I'm not counting someone from a broken down car on the side of the road as a pedestrian, since those are covered by different laws.
Wouldn't you expect the hypothesis of new vehicles increasing ped deaths show up in motorcycle fatalities too? It seems much more plausible from this baseline data that the introduction of the smartphone is more relevant: the skyrocketing happened at the precise time the smartphone took off, and smartphone ubiquity naturally wouldn't affect motorcyclist fatality (while new vehicle shapes would).
Of course, there are myriad other potential explanations, including the trend towards urbanization and walkable cities over the last decade and a half, but I don't see how you can conclude that the pedestrian fatality graph is useful evidence of the greater dangers of newer vehicle designs.
My 2002 Saturn LW200 had the best UI of any car I've ever owned. Everything was a mechanical button, lever, or knob and it had only two very-simple screens: a clock radio (segment LCD) and an odometer (VFD).
With the secret de Sade trim, I hope. /s
I don't think the comparison is so absurd. The result can vary a lot based on where you live - how hard the weather is on the car, how much a mechanic charges per hour, how strict the smog/inspection regulations are.
In San Francisco maintenance/repairs are $150/hour at an independent shop. A former colleague and I worked out that the 10+ year old used cars we both drove ended up costing almost exactly the same in depreciation and maintenance as leasing a new Subaru Outback. They only worked out cheaper overall because we could forego the comprehensive insurance required for a lease.
I'd switched to a job that required commuting more than 15k miles a year by the time mine failed its smog test and needed to be replaced (a CARB compliant replacement catalytic converter would have been almost as much as I'd paid for the car) so got another old used car. He ended up leasing when his car died.
They're doing economic reporting -- they're pointing out that the median age is going up, which is bad for auto makers.
I don't think they're telling anyone that is a bad thing for individuals, just for the economy as a whole.
This seems to assume thay buying wastefull shit you don't need is good for economy? That efficiency and individuals saving money is bad for economy?
We want fewer people producing things that last more.
The 80s called and want their AOD and 700R4 back.
Sure. And what about adding a giant huge metal sharp spike in the windshield pointing directly to the driver's forehead, while we're at it. That should teach people to drive safely.
Put a little one on the steering wheel aimed at your heart, primed for airbag insertion. :-P
I fall on the "safer stuff = safer" side of the equation, against the "safer stuff encourages more stupid" BTW.
I mean, my car has ABS and I could brake a lot later for every corner but the shuddering, squealing and G forces don't feel like a nice UX.
We can also remove the seat belts.
Oh and 500Hp 8,000lb pick up trucks with 6ft tall front grills don’t accelerate fast enough, let’s put Tesla’s plaid tech in them so they can get to 90mph in seconds. Currently there’s far too much lag when 8,000lb trucks hit the gas to weave through traffic at 95mph.
Presumable Making these updates will give people the proper fear they need in order to drive safer and reduce accidents.
Hmmm.. that certainly doesn't apply to me, and I drive a '96.
https://www.thetruthaboutcars.com/2014/02/falling-out-of-pan...
These days, 260hp isn’t much of anything special, but back then it was the most powerful car I’d ever bought, and I still love the whine of the air, increasing in frequency, as I pull onto an empty freeway and put my foot down to get up to speed.
Over the years it’s needed a small amount of maintenance - new tires, timing belts etc. But nothing has gone wrong that isn’t expected to happen on the maintenance schedule. That reliability and the fact that it’s been paid for, for over a decade now, is just awesome.
Airbags everywhere, excellent brakes, not much rear visibility (but it’s a convertible, so the top is down more often than not), traction control, and a 6-cd changer [grin], what’s not to like :)
Having said all that, in a few years it’ll be time to move to an electric car, but I want to stave off that future as long as possible.
So it comes out to 30 cents per mile plus my morbidity/mortality risk. Hard to justify a new car if I am happy with my current driving experience, which all I care about is CarPlay and air conditioning. I am hoping electric cars are fully tested and reliable by the time my car dies. Or someone steals it.
I agree with the safety concerns others have mentioned about older cars, and I would gladly pay more for safety. But I do feel a bit frustrated when getting the safety also requires a huge TCO increase for frivolous features. (E.g., are the automatic windshield wipers really worth the 4x cost bump at the glass shop?)
This is a pretty common experience of Prius owners. There’s also a huge modding community for them, so it’s easy to find information about any part of them. There are even tutorials on how to replace bad cells in the battery pack. (Just don’t drop a wrench and cause a short.)
I looked it up, it's 500-1000€ just for the metals. It's a wonder people aren't stealing them more.
Hondas have a reputation for being fairly bulletproof and cheap to maintain. Mazdas have a reputation for being fun to drive and occasionally going "bang".
You might be pleasantly surprised by the TCO of a new Civic or Accord.
https://blog.tirerack.com/blog/motorsport-messages-from-mars...
https://www.reddit.com/r/DIY/comments/zbxa6/resurrection_198...
This can be chalked up to another feature of capitalism: planned robustness.
Less social pressure to get new car as harder to tell what’s new. Obviously not impossible but not as stark as a 1990 from a 2000 car. 2010 and 2020 car don’t look that much different.
Thus most car owners in the UK can tell (unless you have vanity plates) roughly how old your car is.
A neat experiment would be randomly issue vanity plates that change the year but look normal and see if there is a difference how long a person keeps the car. If having a plate that makes it appear you have a newer car makes you hang on to it longer.
So a study might be able to look at mainland UK vehicle retention rates versus NI, though it would have to normalise for income and outgoings.
However, people do sometimes put older vanity plates on newer cars to hide the age.
It will be a couple of years before this supply effect works through the system. It has nothing to do with consumer behavior choosing to purchase more new cars and driving up the price as a result of increased demand.
As plastics age and go through heat/cool cycles the get brittle and easily fail. It’s infuriating to have to dismantle half the engine just to replace a $5 coolant elbow because GM decided to use a plastic one instead of metal.
Then I read the March 1973 "Bicycle" issue of Scientific American, which measured efficiency in terms of Kilograms/Kilometers/KCalories. Back then bikes were about 28x more efficient than cars. Steve Jobs referred to that article when he declared computers to be a "bicycle for the mind". As for me: I dropped cars and bought a bike.
We own all our vehicles so maintenance, insurance, and fuel are the only real costs of ownership.
Since I have lots of tools accumulated and skills learned over more than 40 years of driving I do a lot of my own maintenance and upgrades.
All but one of our vehicles has more than 230k miles on the odometer. The exception has 110k miles and is 6 years old. The other vehicles range in age from 10 years old to 46 years old. We bought 4 of these vehicles new, of the other two one was a gift and the other I bought at auction for a pittance.
I prefer older vehicles without all the safety stuff, electronics, etc. They are simple to work on and maintain and will last a long time without having to be molly-coddled. I do appreciate the skills needed by the new vehicle designers to fit all that crap under the hood, inside the dash, etc. and make it all work. The drawback is that this does make some maintenance work a lot more difficult than it should be as things have to be moved out of the way to fix relatively simple problems.
I don't see airbags and things like that as necessary features. I only have 3 vehicles that came with them and all 3 have had bags recalled.
As long as I have space to store the vehicles and the option to start and stop insurance coverage (shift from daily driver to stored vehicle) with 24 hours notice I will likely keep all of them since we own them.
I have a hard time getting excited about spending $30k or more for a vehicle that will monitor everything I do, how I choose to do it, where I go, etc. You will never own that vehicle like I own mine.
I am not one of those redneck dipshits who disables emission controls, lifts the body and buys larger tires. I use OEM parts for everything when they are available, aftermarket parts if they aren't. All my vehicles except one are or could be daily drivers for anyone. My wife and my kids drive them so they have to work right and be safe with no mechanical issues that could leave them in a bind.
Over the years I have had to upgrade my maintenance skills to be able to troubleshoot electronics, sensors, etc. That is probably the one thing that I appreciate most about newer vehicles, that I have been forced to learn new things and to buy new tools. Who doesn't like new tools?
I have also learned a lot about several manufacturers and the corners they cut or the extra steps they take to improve the ownership experience.
Cars are pretty great. Trucks are pretty greater.
I am excited to finally see wide adoption of electric vehicles. It can't come soon enough. I think Musk might have said that part of the reason he started building cars was to try to drive the old guard companies into a shift to electrics. With Ford, GM, Toyota, Honda, etc getting on board I think he has satisfied that goal and we will all benefit.
As someone who worked 40 years in the oil and gas business I just want to see all that ended. Regulate it out of existence or do as investment houses are doing and just cut off funding for new exploration.
Where would that leave all my older vehicles? Well, I would have great platforms for conversion to electrics or I could scrap them and let their materials become something else useful. Like the rocks, everything changes with time.
> I don't see airbags and things like that as necessary features.
Those points contradict this one:
> My wife and my kids drive them so they have to [...] be safe
Airbags don't make you safer. They simply absorb and dissipate damaging energy thus preventing many serious injuries when drivers become involved in accidents.
Safe drivers drive defensively and practice traffic hazard and conflict recognition and avoidance which minimizes the likelihood that they will become involved in someone else's malfunction. You won't need those airbags.
Personally, my wife and I have commuted up to 37500 miles annually, each. That's about 75k miles annually on two vehicles. In more than 30 years of driving since we have been married we have owned and driven vehicles all over the US from the east to the west coast thru major cities, rural areas and off-road for recreation. Combined, I can document more than 1.5 million miles we have driven and I can say with confidence that too many of our fellow drivers on some of those roads were not in a condition to drive.
In all that time, we have only been involved in three accidents. All three of those accidents occurred in the last 5 years and involved the same vehicle. That vehicle was a 2013 VW Passat. It had all the fancy stuff on it to keep you safe in an accident. The main failure though that contributed to two of the accidents was an illumination failure. The headlights on that vehicle were narrow LED lights that even on high beams could not illuminate the highway in front of the vehicle far enough for the driver to react to objects or animals in the roadway when they are moving at highway speeds.
Modern slit lights do not have the illumination reach that older lights offer. In addition, modern lights may be keyed to your steering wheel so that when you turn the lights they follow thru the turn. Since the lenses on the lights have a sharp cutoff at the top they cannot illuminate relatively moderate slopes as you ascend hills. You are met with a sharp cutoff instead of being able to see up the hill you are driving over.
This results in you over-driving your headlights at highway speeds because you will travel farther than your lights can illuminate in the time it takes you to recognize a hazard in the road or beside the road. This is simply not safe.
Our Mazda has this problem.
The third accident involved another driver who had a red light and a distraction in their hand and they jumped into the intersection t-boning the car hard enough to knock the front wheel under it. That sent the car to the junkyard after a brief trip to the dealership to sell it into the dieselgate buyback since it was still drivable and qualified. Insurance totalled it the day before the buyback ended so we got lucky.
When we have encountered drivers who are distracted or obviously impaired I use the skills defensive driving taught me to create a gap to separate myself from the problem. If there is an opportunity then I have a passenger call 911 to report a dangerous driver.
I taught my wife and kids how to improve their driving using pin flags to mark a course on the back part of our property. They drove several vehicles with the goal being to understand where you are in space through the whole drive. I placed cans in the path and had them drive the course until they could consistently crush the can in any of our vehicles using either the driver or the passenger tire. That skill allows you to look at something like a parking spot or a gap between vehicles and know instinctively whether your vehicle will fit without issue. It also helps you understand your limitations at high speed on the highway when an object is in your lane. You have a feel for exactly where you can shift to avoid it without affecting any other drivers on the road.
I have tried to be a safe driver and to make sure my wife and kids are too. A safe driver is the most important thing that any vehicle can have in it. The driver needs to be aware of where they are, they need to be alert, and they need to be in a dependable vehicle.
Fancy gizmos, screens, airbags, touch-sensitive features, sensors to locate hazards in adjacent lanes - these are things that either distract a driver and make them less safe or they are things designed to mitigate the consequences of failing to be a safe driver and to save the lives of the people in their vehicles so that this person who couldn't be bothered to pay atten...
Honestly, they might be come infeasible from a software perspective far before they do from a mechanical perspective.
Their batteries sure won't.
Really, the thing with old batteries isn't so much that they degrade (though a few cars had problems with it like the early Nissan Leafs), but rather that the technology is getting better all the time, and even if degradation isn't a factor, a twenty-year-old battery will be based on twenty-year-old tech, whereas newer cars will be have more range, charge more quickly, and be lighter.
So the drivetrains may well last longer, but that's not what drives first-owners of cars to trade/sell for a newer model, as drivetrains already well outlast most first owners desire to keep them.
We actually have junkyards full of EV cars that are under 5 years old, because the battery or chassis got some damage, and it would cost $10k-$30k to replace.
Ditto. I'm in a condo and I suspect it'll be at another 5yrs before they support installing chargers. Right now: nope.
Probably a good burgeoning opportunity here i.e. install the charging infrastructure in condo garages.