In terms of bells and whistles? Yeah, not that much. But in terms of safety tech, there has been a huge progress in last 10 years and it’s not slowing down. New cars are not only getting harder to crash, but in case of crash they’re getting better and better at protecting you.
Safety is main reason why I update my cars every few years, even tho it’s pretty costly. But so is having my family seriously injured or killed.
Marty, he's in a '46 Ford, we're in a DeLorean - He'd rip through us like we were tin foil!In those days, dare devils didnt last long.
Now, they can crash and kill, and drive again in a few hours.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Gordon_Tullock#Tullock's_spike
It's probably only only worth it after a redesign (every 6 years, or so), and I'd wait for the second model year in the new generation for them to work out the kinks. That said, the EV of added safety, especially coming from a car generation build before the small overlap frontal crash test was added in 2012, is pretty good.
That really depends on how old your car is. I generally buy instead of lease, and run the car until it starts having regular problems. As a result, my car is 12 years old, and any new one from the last few years is a significant upgrade in terms of features. I don't really want a monthly car payment again, but I'm almost looking forward to when my current car starts having enough problems to make the upgrade worth it.
Beyond airbags and ABS (both now ubiquitous), I don’t need the new feature faff. I just need something that will start everyday and that I can do the basic maintenance on. Fortunately, that’s still easily available and cheap in the 5-ish year-old “those cars are too old to be reliable” mindset-driven market.
I can’t believe that people are willing to borrow money to keep driving 0-4 year old cars forever, but I’m glad they do because it greatly subsidizes the cars I drive.
Maybe new features like self-driving aren't as interesting, but I would buy a new car instead of a used one just for the perceived improved safety.
I don't know if there's any research showing that these features actually reduce accidents/fatalities though (plausibly if they malfunctioned it could be worse than nothing)
Those numbers include pedestrian deaths, which the same wiki article states "began rising in 2010, and exceeded 6,000 by 2018" (constituting a higher percentage of deaths in 2018 than in 2010).
If you subtract off the 6400 pedestrian deaths in 2018 and the 4200 in 2010, then you do see a drop-off in fatalities per hundred million miles driven -- from 0.971 in 2010 to 0.935 in 2018 (and even lower in 2019 at 0.925, as the raw number of deaths went down as miles traveled went up).
(Further, this isn't even considering other non-automobile occupants in crashes, whether that's bicycles or motorcycles.)
The car isn't even that long--the back pillars and back window are just weird (Hyundai Veloster).
Which brings me to the point of common sense. Not everyone shares it, or uses it, and so these features are useful. We can talk all day about what people should or could do, but at the end of the day, it just isn't going to happen.
It's not clear to me how much of this change to the car shape is driven by competing safety standards, i.e. side impact and rollover protection, and how much it is the continuous march of fashion/stylistic tweaks.
I was in a near crash without doing any of those things (night driving on a very fast road in an area I was unfamiliar with, and misread the shape of the road). I panicked and swerved without checking my blind spot (it was an empty road, or so I thought) and almost caused the other person to crash. More advanced blind spot monitoring systems could have largely removed the danger of the situation I was in, although obviously there is a lot that I could/should have done better myself. I think the next year's model had a HUD which showed blind spot status.
So your question should be, across all cars, how many accidents have there been with and without blind spot monitors? Even then, it would be hard to control for all other factors (newer cars have blind spot monitoring, but are also safer in general, you need to compare similar years, traffic conditions, etc).
All of that to say — any single comment online is just an anecdote.
Which is to say "quite meaningful", but when the absolute rate of serious crashes per driver is as low as it is, it's statistically impossible that driver aids are saving the typical individual driver from a serious crash multiple times in a driving lifetime, let alone multiple times since their introduction.
I picked $40k because that's roughly the median price of a new car. Whether your going for a $25k car, or a $125k car, the advice is the same: get a low-interest loan.
I buy older than most people; currently my newest car is a 2009. I do maintenance and routine repairs myself, and I lose almost nothing on depreciation. But you can still come out ahead by buying 4-6 years old and letting the original buyers take the bulk of the depreciation losses.
Car market is a bit strange right now.
Check the price on your 2009 on eBay or craiglist. Is it worth more than you think it should be?
Just stop and think for a second - put yourself in the dealer's shoes - why do you think the dealer would want cash? No reason. They don't want your cash. A cash buyer is a pain. They want to sell you a loan.
The last time I bought a car I offered cash, and they countered with a four-figure discount (on total cost of ownership) if I took part of it as a loan. I now have that part of the price invested, creating money, while I gradually pay the loan.
And my credit score went up as I had a new, responsible loan!
Cash buyers are fools, unless you're really at the point of valuing not having a loan for moral reasons (maybe a German?) at four-figures.
They get a proportion of the sale price, and they get paid a referral fee for you opening a loan, and then on top of that they can offer extras that you probably don't need like fabric protection products.
> Nobody is coming out with less money on a loan purchase vs. cash, except the buyer.
The dealer is paid to get you to get a loan. If they don't get the loan, they get less money. My understanding is that their referral fee is somewhat weak about how much the loan actually has to be, so they just care that you take it.
It's worth it to them to discount the price by less than their loan referral fee, in order to get the loan referral fee.
> And if you had walked out the door they would have run after you to take the cash deal AND given you the discount.
No they'd just have sold to someone willing to pay their price.
There's a car supply shortage... that's the whole point of the article... did you miss that? If you want to buy a new car at the moment and you go in haggling them on a mid to high end spec car they'll just tell you to fuck off and you won't get the car you want.
Which is added in to the finance charges or amount borrowed. Ever wonder why the salesmen always want to negotiate a "payment" amount instead of a purchase price?
> No they'd just have sold to someone willing to pay their price.
And I'd have just gone to another dealer willing to work with me on my terms.
> There's a car supply shortage
True, and that causes higher prices overall. But negotiation strategies for getting the best deal haven't changed.
Well that's the point - say you want agree a purchase price for the car before you talk about how you'll pay. Do that and get an actual number from them. Then...
Offer to pay the agreed price cash and ask for a discount based on this - you won't get one because there's no benefit to the dealer in taking cash it's just an inconvenience to them.
or...
Offer to take at least a small a loan and ask for a discount based on this - you might get one because the way they are established means there are strong incentives for them to make loans.
In either case you can of course threaten to walk away if the price isn't right, but paying cash isn't going to increase your bargaining power it's going to diminish it - 'not only is this person wanting to pay less but they also want to fuck up my loan referral rate and fee and make me unpopular with my manager'. And at some point I presume you need a car so you can't walk away forever.
The idea that you're an attractive customer if you'll pay cash is a 90s thing.
There are always offers which are available to cash buyers/real loan buyers, but not 0% financing buyers. The reason for this is simple; 0% financing is a hack to get people to buy more expensive cars, and you'll discover that on the lower margin cars that option mysteriously vanishes.
I just went through this myself and helped two friends out, it's true for Ford, Honda, VW, Audi, and Chevy at least in the US.
* If you happen to be one of the few people who actually wants to buy a high-margin car (usually Halo cars like Corvettes) then sure, get the 0% financing. Just realize that you're being fleeced, although if you're buying a Vette you probably already knew that and value isn't top-of-mind
Sure the dealer will take cash if that's how you want to pay but you're not getting any extra discount.
The key is to not get emotionally invested in owning the car before you actually own the car. A lot of people can't do that.
Trade ins are good for negotiation too. Wanted the factory extended warranty. Dealers in other states will discount the extended warranty but can’t sell in my state. Dealer wouldn’t discount the warranty to the price of the out-of-state so I had them keep it that price and up the trade in value to match it. They can show they didn’t discount the warranty. I get the discount.
They did that if I would get finance thru them, matching my prearranged banks rate. Deal made.
Went in the next Monday to the local bank and refinanced the car loan.
Also made them give me so thing for signing the arbitration agreement. Everything is negotiable. I did have to walk away but they called me back on the drive home.
German Ideal nowadays is to buy a house for a couple hundred grand on a loan that you finish paying off when retiring.
https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=14484615
I also had a friend do exactly what I described, and there was another thread where they only had to make two payments and then could pay off the rest without penalty (and even that was an unspoken gentlemen's agreement with the dealer) -- will find if I get a chance.
The point is, it's simply not warranted to assume as a bedrock of truth that no dealer every makes a confused deal in this respect, as chrisseaton was insisting.
I don't carry comprehensive insurance on my car. I drive a 2000 Honda Accord though, so the KBB value (and what they quoted me for) was only about $1000. I wouldn't carry comprehensive on that. But you bet if I've got $40k+ rolling down the road and in the elements it's going to have some insurance on it.
If I had a 0% loan on it for some reason at that point, that meant paying off the loan to let me do that. (If you assume an 8% nominal return on investments, that means when paying off the loan would cost me under $100/mo.)
I think you should insure against risks that would be a substantial impact to your life and (generally) not insure against risks that wouldn't.
Better advice: put the money in the market or other higher-yielding investment, then take a low or no interest loan on the vehicle when the time comes so those investments can continue to grow at the much higher clip. Money's just too cheap to give away your own cash. Obviously, if the interest rate environment changes, this should be re-evaluated.
You might be able to scrounge up a few basis points somewhere if you're really determined and/or willing to meet some requirements. Still, even with our low-inflation these days [1], you're actually losing money in these savings accounts.
Main point though is that it's more of a relative game vs your ROI elsewhere. Even indexes and ETFs that are reasonably "low-risk" are routinely returning much more these days, and of course over the long haul equity markets still beat this handily, even when smoothed for downturns.
[0] https://www.bankrate.com/banking/savings/rates/
[1] https://www.statista.com/statistics/244983/projected-inflati...
It is funny though that they give the example that at $5,000 saved your effective APY is around 2.79%. I mean, the bottom line is that as soon as you get above $3K, any additional savings drops to a lowly 1%, which doesn't keep pace with inflation (i.e. you're losing money). But they're presenting it like 2.79% is some kind of average that matters, thus implying it's a good idea to keep pouring money in.
The reality is that the offer is not an average, but two discrete terms of 4% and 1%. And, on the latter, you're trading whatever other returns you could've made elsewhere for that miserly 1%. Much better to put it elsewhere, even for those who bite on the initial $3K for 4%.
If you pay off the car up front you may run into liquidity issues until you have restored your emergency fund.
The comment I was responding too talked specifically about saving money in a savings account for the purposes of buying expensive things like a car. It should go with out saying one should not use their emergency fund for these purchases (unless they are an emergency)
Once you have the 6mos to 1 year of expenses in your emergency fund you should divert any other cash to other accounts such as Debt Repayment (providing the debt is more than 5-7% interest or current inflation) and/or investments such as tax advantaged retirement accounts
Maybe you could upgrade your car now for much less than you think, or maybe you only want the latest shiny parts. Either way you need to be honest with yourself, cars have evolved and stayed modern over the past 2 decades compared to any time in automobile history
Remember when cars of the 90s were so much better than cars of the 80s? Going over 100k mi/km in most cars wasn’t a concern anymore. Now a large majority of cars are going 200-300k without a sweat
Oh yes. Remote monitoring, tracking for advertising, contact list stealing through the USB charger port...
Also all of your other ten year old hardware probably has vulnerabilities you are not aware of as well
There was a time when people were worried about that as a privacy invasion. Even though, to access it, someone has to dig into the wreckage and retrieve the recorder. And all it yields is details of the last 30 seconds before the crash.
My only worry is that something will go wrong enough with it in the next year or so that we’d be compelled to get another car in this rather tight market, but otherwise, knowing that your car's current resale (and repurchase) value is approximately the secondary wage earner’s monthly after-tax income is liberating.
How does that work? Are models named for the year after they become available?
Whether your into sports cars or fuel efficient cars, both categories have meaningfully improved over the past few years.
For sports cars, there's a number of 500,600,700hp cars on the market. Corvettes went mid engine (2020), Miatas lost 400lbs of weight(2016), Mustangs/Camaros/Chargers are now 460+HP (2018ish), a VW Golf R will hit 60MPH in 4 seconds with a 2.0L motor, and that's not even getting into Teslas.
For economy cars, a Rav4 hybrid gets about as good of fuel economy as a 2014 Prius, while being substantially larger. There are good hybrid offerings from non-Toyota brands, such as KIA. Plug in hybrids are pretty widely available. Even non-hybrids such as the Civic improved substantially in fuel economy in the past few years. In 2016, Civic fuel economy improved about 8% across the lineup.
For many auto makers, the transition from early 2010s to late 2010s came with substantial improvements. Not just in measureable metrics either. Transmission performance has improved so much between 2010 and 2020. It's really insane to experience a 2010 6 speed automatic, then compare it to a car with a modern 8,9,10 speed. The difference is night and day for most cars.
But I think "meaningfully improved" is in the eye of the beholder.
Steve Jobs' one more thing for iPod gen five included the exclamation "calendars never looked better!"
You look at the slide he has behind him and it looks ridiculous. How useful was that calendar, how silly does that look now? What is the meaning of 0 to 60 in 4 seconds when there's traffic anyway? Isn't there a safer, less expensive way to get a rush than pushing a pedal with a foot?
I'm not arguing that these features you're describing viewed through the lens of today aren't meaningful. Breakout on iPod Video was cool too. But these improvements do not change the fundamental experience of personal transportation. They make it marginally better at best.
I take public transit and don't own a car ($500/m parking, insane insurance rates in SF, cars broken into within minutes in daylight), but drive rentals/carshare-by-hour periodically. Merging and accelerating onto a freeway from a rate limited entryway stopped to 60 is somewhat useful while keeping up with flow.
But to defend the analogy, iPod Video was iPod gen 5. Apple did two more generations on that format with the minimum additional feature set.
That might take a while. And there will be many a Zune sold in the meantime.
[1] https://www.bloomberg.com/news/articles/2021-04-29/apple-fin...
[2] https://unctad.org/news/shipping-during-covid-19-why-contain...
If might not matter if a person pays the rent, but people are definitely on the hook with both their lenders and their auto insurance providers.
It has also never been easier to recognize a vehicle marked for repo than it is today. Vigilant's (Motarola) DRN and MVTrac are mature, growing while the cost of new LPR equipment continues to go down.
When it comes to the repo man, It's never been a worse time to be in violation of a car loan or lease.
Americans will pay their car loan before their rent.
Something which doesn't need much maintenance, like a Honda or Toyota or something, is a lifeline. Fuel is still relatively cheap; modern cars are twice as efficient as similar cars from ~40-50 years ago. Housing has skyrocketed in that time compared to income. But a car is often a pre-requisite for many jobs. And with Uber/Lyft/door-dash, etc, a car can enable you to almost immediately get a modest job in most cities in the country. And it's easy to move to a new city if you have a car, as it functions as your own private room (even if you have to crash on a couch... or sleep in a Walmart parking lot). They also mean you don't need to rely on local 7/11 or delivery services for food. You can go buy in bulk, shop across town. A car gives you optionality and security. Wise or not, we've built our nation around cars, and now cheap used cars with affordable fuel are basically our main safety net.
Separately, I suspect that quite a few of the ppl who had rent relief had cars that, let’s just say, wouldn’t be highly sought in he used vehicle market.
Perhaps.
Vehicles have been pushed in every medium as status symbols. Creative financing options and cheaper insurance have allowed those affected by this to continue to participate. It isn’t just new cars but expensive restoration and customization of old ones.
I think this is beginning to fall away, in part because young people do not rely on physical presence to gain and maintain social standing among their peers as much as they used to.
So a better phone camera matters more than nicer rims. Selfies in front of a fancy car get less likes than swimming next to a sea tortoise.
That said I think groups that have been economically disadvantaged over long periods of time process and integrate culture shifts like this more slowly.
> Presumably, due in part to eviction protection, they have been able to divert all or a portion of their rent payments to keeping up with bad car loans for commute vehicles that often will not be needed.
There are gonna be far fewer evictions and/or mortgage defaults than people think, all those ppl who have been out of work are likely making more money right now than they were at the start of the pandemic just from unemployment, additionally bec they’re unemployed they may qualify for their states’ Medicaid benefits and food stamps, not to mention the free school lunches than many states have turned into a basically tons of raw produce and other various meal-making materials delivered/picked up each week. All those extra benefits mean the raw unemployment dollars go farther compared to a normal income creating an effectively higher $/hr wage than if you just look at the $300-600/wk(+state unemployment).
All this distills down to the fact that everyone has been flush with cash the entire time so much so that I know a few people in March 2020 who were behind on rent but due to all the aforementioned benefits were able to pay the rent they owed. Meaning that people having been making rent and/or mortgage for the most part and have probably been living beyond their (normal) means for the last year. If there’s gonna be any sort of correction it’s not coming until mid-2022 at the earliest.
Right now if we just get off with a little stagflation that would be a blessing, unfortunately I think it is going to far far worse. All those people depending on government checks are going to get hit hardest by the combination of inflation and the required austerity measures
I had to carry the peg board from the in-town hardware store because it wouldn't fit in my Mustang. A Ford Mustang has the same sticker price as it did when I bought mine 10 years ago. So, if there's inflation, Mustangs have comparatively gotten cheaper.
The peg board itself was $18 for a 4'x4' sheet. I haven't looked it up, but I suspect I could have paid 4x cheaper by area by buying full sheets at Home Depot. I would have paid the difference in transportation costs just buying the one sheet, though.
I am not sure where you are getting your prices, in 2011 Base Mustang v6 coupe sticker was $22,145. Adjusted for CPI to official 2021 dollars that would be $26,076.
Base model 2021 Mustang v6 Coupe starts at 27,155, which is about 4% more than CPI indicated would be accounted for by official inflation
The difference is even more if we look at the GT500, which in 2011 was $53,645 which in official 2021 dollars would be $63,169 yet the 2021 GT500 has a sticker price starting at $72,900 a full 13% higher than inflation.
So please tell me where you are getting a 2021 Ford Mustang new for the EXACT same price as one would have paid in 2011??? Or you got massively ripped off 10 years ago... My current vehicle today has book value of about $1,500 MORE than when I bought it used 3 years ago (about a 1% increase in value), late model cars do not normally go UP in value as they age, but mine has in the last year or so....
as to the Peg Board, in my area right now a 4x8 sheet of Peg Board @ the local home depot is $25.. Definitely not $5 as you seem to believe, lumber prices (and peg board is in that) is up somewhere around 400% this year as there are MASSIVE shortages for building supplies of all types but especially wood based products
Retail price for the V6 premium trim Mustang I bought was about $26000 retail. The modern equivalent I would say is a V4 with basic trim, because the 2021 base model comes with considerably more technology than the 2011 premium. The only practical difference is leather vs. cloth seats. The retail price for that car is about 27000. So yeah, I think you can get the roughly the same amount of Mustang today for the same price 10 years ago.
If you look at the V4 premium, then yeah it's about 20% more expensive than the base model which tracks estimated inflation. You're getting considerably more technology than the premium model a decade ago, though. It's a better car. Maybe not 20% better though.
I'm laughing about the peg board prices. You're calling me out with numbers, but it seems like you're ignoring the dimensions, and I explicitly claimed that my estimate was unsubstantiated. I just looked it up as well, and the equivalent quality sheet is $19 per 4'x8' sheet at the closest Lowes. I bought a 4'x4' sheet locally for $19. So, I only paid 2x. Seems like a high premium still. I wonder what home improvement stores pay wholesale?
Not about being confrontational it about dealing in actual facts
I disagree with your comparison of a v6 premium to a Base v4 and calling it "the same". Also I think it is unfair to account for technology in the way you have, if we looked at technology in that way then we would have MASSIVE deflation in the world, as a $1500 computer 10 years go would cost $35 to buy a comparable processing power. Saying that technology has gotten better there for no inflation is on of the biggest problems I have with the CPI in general
On the Peg Board, I am not sure what "locally" is but assuming you live in a large city the cost of operating a business in the city can easily increase the prices that high compared to where most lowes are located which often have less taxation, lower properly costs, and over all lower expenses. I am not surprised a local hardware store would charge a premium for a product, convenience it worth something. Clearly you thought the price was worth that vs driving out to the Lowe's to get your sheet. The excuse of "it would not fit" does not work either as Lowe's would cut it down for you to the dimensions you need for free
Burritos, blue jeans and Honda Civics haven't changed much technologically over the years, and their prices seem to track with average inflation.
From a user experience, a $1500 computer from 10 years ago is still likely to be usable and able to run modern software. Buying a $1500 computer today is a significant upgrade.
Burritos on the other hand aren't changing, and yet they're seemingly 50%-100% more expensive than they were 10 years ago.
Is it not possible that certain markets are deflating while others are inflating?
That's interesting, I think. I suspect cars are becoming more expensive to manufacture over time due to more stringent regulations. Lower emissions, more active safety features, etc. Maybe certain raw materials have become more expensive as well? Or maybe NRE costs have gone up across the board now that electric cars are becoming mainstream?
Sorry to say I so not support either one of those economic schools of thought... Time will tell who is right
To believe we can just create from thin air 6+ trillion dollars in 18 mo's and plan to create 4-6 trillion more it will not result in massive inflationary pressures is a folly.
You might be right in the debt disappears, because people will be buying bread with figurative wheel barrow's of money as the dollar collapses...
grated that is the worst case, but these rosy predictions that everything will just continue on with no more than 3% inflation is lunacy at the highest order. We are seeing massive inflation in many market segments all being labeled as "shortages" for other reasons than currency problems. 400% in lumber,300% in food, etc. I submit it is not only shortages driving those numbers
Presumably, due in part to eviction protection, they have been able to divert all or a portion of their rent payments to keeping up with bad car loans for commute vehicles that often will not be needed.
These folks need them for housing unfortunately.
If repossessed cars start showing up that should put downward pressure on people wanting to buy new ones. Most new cars still suck / Do not offer meaningful new features.
And of those who do buy new, that will be another fresh supply of used cars.
How long is this chip shortage due to vehicles going to last given these circumstances?
https://news.berkeley.edu/2021/05/07/are-renters-and-the-u-s...