301–310 of 340 posts
It's probably like with any other market - low end is super volatile, higher end much less so.
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You could still have crosswalk lights without having traffic signals. Cars on the network would slow, reroute or stop if the pedestrian crossing lights were active. But if there were no pedestrians they could run through intersections at full speed at 90deg angles to each other, as long as they were all timed with the cross-traffic. To me this is an extremely dystopian outcome, but it's inexorably where we're going o…
What's missing in this analysis is everything not a car or pedestrian. Bikes, scooters, ... So this vision can't become truth. Now I understand these are rare in the US, so maybe you're from over there? My guess is we'll establish a maximum speed allowed to drive for humans, say 30km/h up to 50km/h. Speeds above this are reserved for robotic drivers, outside inhabited zones. Some of these roads are vehicle only, like…
You're right, the bicyclists will likely ruin the possibility of total automation for the self-driving fans. I hadn't thought about that. Two clashing visions of a testicle-less utopia. Both entirely devoted to their vision of different worlds in which no one dares take a big machine themselves and drive it down a road without permission.
If it comes to the point where you cannot drive your own car on the highway without computers in it, then you have no freedom of mobility. Your most basic right as a human is gone and your children will grow up in a world where they don't know they have a natural right to go places without asking permission. The only people who will go wherever they please without asking permission will be the people who sold you that technology and who captured the regulatory process to make it required by law.
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On a used car, they do as you describe. On a new car, the sticker generally starts with something like “manufacturer’s suggested base price” then various options, then local adjustments. You can’t just claim that the manufacturer’s suggested base price is $2K higher than it actually is.
I mean you _could_. MSRP is not unique to cars. Graphics cards are sold in online stores for higher than MSRP. It's just not something that dealers are likely to do, because they gravitate towards fees over changing the price.
So you instead write it as $35K and tack on “market adjustment” or “additional dealer profit” or whatever else of $2K.
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You'll probably be less time efficient than a full-time mechanic though.
I'm sorry, but this is an unnecessary and negative comment. I don't know why you made it. Of course a professional will accomplish tasks faster than a DIY'er checking YouTube. But, as OP says, there's savings AND personal satisfaction involved. Why is time-efficiency the metric you're weighting in value?
If a pro mechanic would charge me $100/hr times the book time of 1.3 hours to change pads on my car and I take 3 hours to do it, I saved $130, not $300.
For simple jobs, I can usually match or slightly beat the book rate. Because I don’t have a lift, a lot of undercar work takes me loads longer.
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I'm not assuming. Everyone even remotely close to the industry knows that mechanics don't like the people who want to do the bare minimum amount of work all the time and that fairly strongly correlates to "poors". Of course given the choice a mechanic would rather do an oil change on a '15 4Runner owned by some yuppie he can upsell a cabin air filter to than do a timing set on a '03 Outback for someone who'll decline…
If you were even remotely close to the industry, you would know full well that the older a car is, the more of a pain in the ass is to repair. It only takes one rusty bolt snapping off to turn a 30 minute job into a 3 hour one. When that happens, the mechanic has to eat those extra hours. They don't get to crawl back to the customer and beg for triple the price. The shop owner certainly isn't going to pony up the dif…
Also the rusty bolt thing is over blown. You learn what you can and can't get away with and stop snapping them pretty quick.
Also the mechanic we're discussing is in CA so it's not like he has that problem.
Obviously everyone wants moneyed customers. The closer you are to the money the more you get.
I'm not saying the primary purpose of his messaging was to tell the poor to screw off, just marveling at the fact that it does nice double duty.
My car died, needing a new engine, so I was forced to get one in October. I usually only buy used, but prices are so inflated it didn't seem worth the premium. Used 2017-2020 Toyota Rav4's with 30-60k miles were the same price as a new 2021 model, if you could get one. I knew it was bad, but I was shocked of how bad it was. I went to multiple mega dealerships with 500-1000 cars that were all spoken for. Most had 0 ne…
I bought a RAV4 over the summer. There was no inventory (hint: dealer web sites will lie to you about what's actually available to purchase), I ended up reserving one that hadn't been shipped to the dealer yet and waiting for around a month for it to arrive. Autotrader shows zero of the same trim for sale used within 500 miles so not even sure what it would sell for.
In America how do you get the spec and colour you want if they've already made the car?
And don't you object to buying something that's been sitting around outside for a while with lots of people getting in and out of it?
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My mechanic does this! He loves to work on classic cars as a passion project and has a bunch of classics in his lot that he's slowly working on, however if you call him now, his voicemail says, "Please note if you are calling to inquire work on a model over 20 years old the waiting list is 5-6 months." He's a great guy- if anyone is in Bay Area and needs a good honest mechanic for foreign or domestic, shout out to Ja…
That message does nice double duty as a PC way of saying poors need not bother shopping him for a quote to replace something on their '99 Grand Caravan.
One of the other oddities of this market is that prices for "normal" cars have increased at a higher rate than prices for "upmarket" cars. There is now some pricing overlap that never used to be there.
Someone in the market for a new Porsche can probably wait. Someone in the market for a new Kia probably can't.
VW will be looking at the shortages and making the calculation that they are better off putting limited resources (chips) into Porsches rather than Skodas.
So the working explanation is that the disappearance of new cars (due to chip shortages) has doubled the price of used cars? How long can that bubble last? Is it the same globally?
In northern Europe, it’s business as usual. Maybe our volumes are so small that the market need for new cars is still met?
Time to ditch cars and switch to e-bikes...