I have an 18 year old car that I purchased used long ago and currently has no mechanical issues. I've had a few repairs but nothing terribly expensive. I have no interest in replacing it.
When you think about it, people who are frugal will buy practical and cost effective cars and drive them for a decade or more (that is, if they buy a car at all!). That means they either never buy new at all, or when they do they do so only seldom.
People who are chasing the new shiny will continue to churn through new shiny. And of course they want to pay a lot to get only the shiniest.
So I can see why the average new car cost would creep up, because buying a new car at all is a luxury in most cases.
If you value your life you will be buying the new shiny every 5 years or less.
I hate all the entertainment systems and believe anything beyond Bluetooth and no complex entertainment system to be a lethal distraction that makes cars just as unsafe as older or weaker safety controls.
I think you would be hard-pressed to name a single innovation from the past five years which has increased your lifespan in a car as either a driver or a passenger. Given the fact that things like adaptive braking, lane-following assist, and blind-spot sensors are old enough to be showing up in low-end cars these days I cannot name a single new or shiny safety feature which would not be available in a mid-tier car from 2014. Can you?
(I also do not like the lights on the side mirrors that indicate a vehicle coming by. I constantly think - what about false positives - and then I double check my blind spot)
The lights in the side mirrors are also not removing the obligation to check your blind spot.
Both help, but don’t take away your responsibility as driver.
Regardless of that, the threat environment has changed pretty dramatically in the last two decades. I gave up my 2006 VW sedan for a new SUV this year because the IIHS numbers had started to look bad for lighter vehicles.
https://www.iihs.org/ratings/driver-death-rates-by-make-and-...
Back in 2006 the previous gen VW Passat was basically as safe as anything you could buy (according to their dataset). Now you need something a lot bigger to be upper tier.
The new vehicle is a plug-in so in the first 4 months of driving I've more than doubled my fuel efficiency. So there's that, anyway.
[1] https://people.com/4-killed-after-tesla-crash-sparks-fire-in...
Kind of a weird story for People magazine to be covering, but I guess any story with Tesla gets clicks. Doesn't say if the fire or the high speed impact killed those passengers.
Anyhoo, I'd bet those 140+ people killed by GMs ignition switch wish they had a chance to revisit their car buying choice.
They were expensive, but well designed and durable, yet ... who wants to pay in time and money to develop film every 36 pictures?
I think some really good gas cars only make sense if you use them infrequently to haul heavy things or lots of passengers.
Otherwise it is getting cheaper to run an EV - you might even charge it with electricity you capture yourself.
I spend hours a year more waiting for gas pumps for my ICE than I spend waiting on my EV to charge. And I put way more miles on my EV than my ICE.
My point still stands. Despite driving more miles on my EV my ICE wastes my time on pumping gas especially before all the time I waste with routine maintenance. I am far from alone.
Why would anyone waste their time going to gas stations all the time and wait for oil changes and have to deal with all that maintenance of things like timing belts and what not?
You'll spend considerably more of your life standing next to a gas pump than they spend waiting for their cars to charge. And you'll spend more money per mile in the end for the energy cost. And yet somehow you'll continue to feel superior about it. Congrats on spending so much of your life pumping gas my dude. I'm glad I don't have to spend nearly as much time anymore.
If you can't do that then, yes, an EV is less convenient than a gas car that is true.
Gas is unfortunately going to be around for a long, long time for normal working-class Americans.
Many people my age own their homes around me. They work in HR, they work in finance, they work in construction, they work as insurance sales.
The median home price for a lot areas around me is ~$500k. Meaning there's also a lot of homes <$500k. And I'm in one of the largest metro areas in the country with a bus stop right outside my door, so it's not like I'm in the sticks.
https://fred.stlouisfed.org/series/RHORUSQ156N
2000Q1: 67.1%
2024Q3: 65.6%
Go back even further to 1990Q1, and it was 64%. It had a peak of 69.2% in 2004Q4. In the 80s it was pretty much 63-64%.
Get out of California.
Cars just don't disappear, so all vehicles would "polute" the statistics right?
https://www.spglobal.com/mobility/en/research-analysis/avera...
Sure they will, they'll even buy cheap EVs.
The highest lifetime EV sales in the US is the Leaf, Model 3/Y, and Bolt. They aren't at the top of the list because they're the best cars on the market, but because they are the cheapest.
The cheapest Model 3 is $42,500. The cheapest Model Y is $45,000.
Is that cheap?
The Leaf ($30,000) and Bolt ($27,500) are cheap_er_ (by a lot), but they are still not what I (and presumably parent) would consider cheap.
https://sfbay.craigslist.org/search/cta?auto_make_model=niss...
Not from a new car dealership, no. They'll buy cheap cars, but the mere act of driving a new car off the lot is a huge deprecation event in the life of the car. Why would price sensitive buyers go to the dealership?
> It gets like 11 mpg and uses the 92 octane fuel.
I understand hating on pickup trucks is an easy way to farm upvotes on HN, but there is no 'regular pickup truck' in existence that gets 11 mpg. The closest that comes to that is the F-150 Raptor with turbocharged V8 which is a preposterous performance vehicle with a racing engine. It is a luxury item. Yet for some reason we don't criticize people with the same disdain who buy and drive sports cars which get as bad or even worse mpg. I guess the Lambo drivers never need to haul lumber.
The F-150 is also offered in hybrid (which gets > double that mpg) and all electric drivetrains.
I will make the equally presumptuous assumption that since you've narrowed your choices to "Prius or Prius" you harbor some grudges against pickup owners.
I grew up in deep country. I've owned my share of pickups. When you need them, they're invaluable. When you don't, they're basically the most inconvenient daily drivers you can have short of a box truck, an RV, or a main battle tank. Outside of a fairly narrow range of medium-sized hauling activities, they aren't really even terribly good at carrying things.
I hate talking about things as "it's more than anybody could need" because you end up with needs-based conceptualization of lifestyles with people eating diets of only sweet potatoes, commuting on onewheels, and living in Hong-Kong style coffin apartments. But these things are not only obnoxious main character syndrome demonstrators, they're actively dangerous to everybody in and around them even when they're following the rules of the road.
If I was king for a day, I'd make driving one require a special class of license and tax them extra if they aren't being used for active work purposes like they're intended. They should be in the same class of vehicle as commercial box trucks, because that's what they're supposed to be for.
I wouldn't be at all surprised if some type of vehicle fad takes over the U.S. at some point where people just start driving converted box trucks or RVs around as daily drivers, then complain that all the parking garages and train overpasses are too low for their 13 and a half foot tall lifestyle decisions.
Large pickup trucks take up a lot more space on the road and parking lots, are harder to see around, and when they get into accidents they cause a lot more damage and injuries to people both in and out of cars. There is a very different visceral response to a large pickup truck tailgating you with its driver perched above you, than a Lambo or 911 doing the same.
Point but e.g. the 2024 Silverado gets 12mpg in city driving. Go to any office parking lot here and you’ll see a lot of that size truck which have clearly never been used harder than going to Costco - and even the better ones are barely approaching ⅔ of the mpg of the pickup my grandparents bought in the 1980s.
I do agree that from a pollution standpoint we should treat all inefficient vehicles as the problem but large trucks and SUVs have significant immediate downsides for everyone around them. They’re far more lethal when they hit pedestrians or smaller vehicles, they produce higher tire and brake particulates which are known to cause health issues, they take more space to park, and at least where I live there are streets which could previously handle bidirectional traffic but now require someone to pull over to let oncoming traffic pass because there isn’t enough room for two large vehicles. In contrast, sports car drivers pose less risk because they’re low to the ground and the drivers are far more likely to see you and avoid an accident.
Interesting you mention tire particulates, because there is nothing worse for this than - brace yourself - electric vehicles.
https://grist.org/transportation/electric-vehicles-are-a-cli...
There is a slight increase in tire particulates, sure. A small increase. There's also a lot less brake particulates. And get this: there's no tailpipe emissions either.
https://www.emissionsanalytics.com/news/do-no-harm
The Model Y has +89% more volume. Its considerably bigger car with more torque. It's not a good comparison. And even though its 32% heavier and has a ton more torque, its tire wear was 26% greater. You're arguing it goes up by the fourth power, but it wasn't even a 1 for 1 increase on a car with considerably more torque. And besides, their testing shows the tire wear particulates for their comparison gas car as even higher than the Y.
But let's continue on and see what it is you're trying to point out.
> Kia has 50% as many emissions
You're now talking about the VOCs table at the bottom. This is a pretty bullshit test overall.
> Large samples from one tyre on each vehicle were also taken and placed in a ‘microchamber’ heated to 20 degrees Celsius, around the temperature of a vehicle certification test, and held at that level for the same duration of the on-road EQUA test – around three-and-a-half hours. The off-gassed VOCs were analysed and quantified, and then scaled up by the relative surface area of the sample to that of all four tyres on the vehicle. The results are shown in the table below.
So, this isn't actually testing the tires under load on the car at all, they're just baking a small piece in the oven and scaling the resulting VOCs to the size of the tires. This test isn't testing the car, its testing the tire. There are no controls over this test. It's just a tire of an unknown age from one car with a part cut out and a tire of an unknown age from another car with a part cut out. The brands and models are pretty different, which could lead to pretty radical results.
If I put brand new tires on that Kia and used some pretty old ones on the Tesla those numbers would look radically different. Even two different models of tires from the same manufacturer could yield vastly different numbers. If you used the exact same model from the exact same manufacturer made at the same time the car with bigger tires would have the worst emissions, which says absolutely nothing about whether that's a tire going on an EV or a sedan with a hybrid engine or a truck with a DEF delete getting 6 MPG. See how that's then a pretty poor test?
Seriously friendo, read the studies you're wanting to use to talk about these things. There's so many absolutely bullshit studies trying to get you to think one way or another. Don't just go "table says 57%, ev bad!"
And even then, it's small potatoes compared to actual big trucks and busses rolling on the roads.
Also, almost all the particulate emissions are due to the abrasive nature of the road-tire interface tearing apart the tire. Tires are a cheaper and simpler wear items than roads, something is going to give, so we've decided we'll replace our tires more often than tearing up our roads. Just like if you ever got road rash, the road is going to tear you up far more than you're going to tear the road up. So, while the road forms cracks and what not from its repeated stresses it's not coming apart like dust nearly as much. Don't get me wrong, some small, tiny amount of it does but not nearly as much as the tire.
- gas cars emit more brake pad particulates - EV have lower rolling resistance tires so at equal weight, they emit less tire particulates
So if comparing a pickup vs an EV, the pickup is heavier and will pollute more in terms of both tailpipe and tire particulates.
It's for your own good, peasant. That 1989 S10 (or whatever else got mid 20s around that time) had basically no crash protection let alone ABS and ESC and.... and... and.......
The default in America is to make everything out to be individualistic, but the rest of us have to bear the very real costs of the externality of pickups, not just limited to pollution but also safety, land use, etc.
I ended up in a fullsize primarily because I got it cheaper than the midsizes I was looking at. The midsize market is priced really oddly.
Anywho, I was blown away that it's getting me 23MPG. That's what my previous midsize was giving me. That's nearly double what fullsizes got in the 90s.
Aftermarket headlights blazing directly into the eyes of oncoming drivers are creating a hazard. As is the fact that it takes up a lot of road space and has poor visibility for small objects in front of the hood.
edit: presumably you don't (or can't) hold this position for electronics or a myriad of other devices you already own. Why are cars different?
I do tend to apply this same idea to a lot of things I buy. If there's an American version available with at least similar quality and some % of similar price, I'll pick the US one nearly every time. Goes even further when its something I know is made in my state, even further when it comes to the city I live in. The vast majority of the beer I drink is made in the city I live in, for example.
And in the end that "$10k" Chinese car doesn't fit my needs in the same way a $14k US or Japanese car doesn't fit my needs. When I actually look at a vehicle that does do what I'm looking for, they're not too differently priced.
Note that the "$10k" car in China costs ~$22k in Mexico. So chances are, even without tariffs that car coming to the US would probably be $20k+, not $10k. Probably more, because BYD knows Americans would probably pay more in the end. That's without any tariffs applied.
Chances are though, a similar car to what I'd buy would be more along the lines of the BYD Seal, but even then that's a little smaller than what I'd like. Honestly the Mach E is pretty much the perfect sized vehicle for my family for the majority of our drives, so something like a large hatchback/small crossover is what I'm looking for but a full-sized sedan would do. That went on sale in Mexico without tariffs for 888,800 Mexican Pesos, or about $44k USD. A The 2025 Mach E pricing starts around $37k.
There are none. The Model Y is the closest with 70% of it made in either the US or Canada (the law does not require them to break it down to US only...) Every other car available for sale in the US has more than 30% manufactured outside of the US or Canada. And the big 3 are some of the worst offenders for offshoring their manufacturing out of the US.
https://www.nhtsa.gov/part-583-american-automobile-labeling-...
The top vehicle from the big 3 is the Ford F150 at a whopping 45% US/Canada.
My point is that if you buy any car in the US, you are buying a vehicle with significant foreign manufactured content.
YMMV.
There's no evidence that higher octane fuel is required or leads to performance gains in excess of the cost bump.
Adding octane to fuel isn't adding a booster. It's adding stability to the fuel so it can be run in a higher compression engine. If your engine doesn't reach that pressure then you'll notice no effect except your wallet getting lighter.
Knock (pre-ignition) will destroy an engine. I have a naturally aspirated infinity, but with compression ratio around 13:1 it calls for premium.
Believe me I wouldn't pay for it if it wasn't necessary. It's still cheaper than a new engine.
That being said, unless you are constantly flooring the accelerator and / or doing a lot of track driving, it seems challenging to make a modern (and properly functioning) engine knock on a persistent basis (irrespective of octane).
That's why higher compression engines REQUIRE higher octane fuel, as the manufacturer will specify. Run without it, damage your engine and try to make a warranty claim. Good luck with that!
One thing that's odd about the pickup market is it isn't segmented into low tier/mid tier/luxury tier the way other vehicles are. The luxury version of a Toyota is a Lexus. The luxury version of an F-150 is still an F-150, just a different badge level. Your friend's is a luxury pickup.
If what you do 5% of the time absolutely requires a truck, you don't have many options. You can't rent a truck to tow easily and affordably. There are commercial truck rental places that do have vehicles you can tow with but if you're doing that even 2 days a month you might as well just buy the damn pickup.
And I'd focus on median prices a lot more than mean, though I'm sure there's an increase in that too.
Also, we drive a lot more miles than almost anyone, our gasoline is cheaper, our incomes are higher, and our cars last very long times and are safer than ever now. The average car is over a decade old now. When I was a kid, you got lucky if your odometer hit six figures, in fact some didn't even have that many digits! And I'm not that old.
The American car market is perhaps the best example of an efficient, highly competitive, well-regulated marketplace. Whatever the average price is, it's what it should be.
Here I am working out TCO costs for a range of mid-sized cars for my next purchase, and trying to decide if the extra $2k for a Prius Prime over a Prius will beat the differential in fuel costs for my driving situation. I feel like a chump, but I know it's the smarter thing to do with my money.
I coworker of mine just spent $100k on a regular old pickup truck that is planned to spend less than 5% of the time doing anything other than commuting him back and forth to work. It doesn't fit in any of the parking garages around here, or in his garage -- he has to park it at the other side of a surface lot because it doesn't fit in the normal spots. It gets like 11 mpg and uses the 92 octane fuel.
Americans won't buy cheap cars, they won't buy upmarket small cars, but they'll burn their children's college fund into the ground for a 2 second gain on 0-60 and bad ergonomics.
I can afford the fancy car, but I'd rather turn $100k into $200k in my index funds and buy an entire apartment in Spain overlooking the Mediterranean with the gains.
We can have nice things, but this is why we can't have affordable things.