Another blow against the "cars = freedom" mantra we have so wrongly pursued for 50+ years. Now that prices are up and highway maintenance costs are continuing to increase you have no alternative but to open your wallet for the automakers and state departments of roads and highways bureaucrats because guess what, they've legislated your density and your sidewalks and bike lanes away and stopped you from taking the train.
New cars are just for rich people now
51–60 of 130 posts
Re: New cars are just for rich people now
#52This may not be the worst thing honestly, from an environmental perspective. The cars themselves have much longer usable lives now so it's for the best that cars move down to new users instead of needing to build more and more. The downsides, however, is that while the car part of the car is more durable and long-lasting than ever, the software/computer parts of the car are hamstrung by terrible decisions that are su…
Discouraging car use through high prices could be a great thing. But cities have been designed to favor car convenience so much, at the expense of everything else (walking, cycling, mass transit), that people are essentially forced to buy a car in order to work, shop, and survive. We discuss these things on Reddit/FuckCars.
Re: New cars are just for rich people now
#53I'm speaking out of ignorance here, since I have no idea what role a microchip plays in modern vehicles, but obviously it's geared towards software components.
Assuming that's true, then this whole chip shortage would have been a great time for someone to bring a software-less, low-tech vehicle to the market. I've personally been wanting that as our last vehicle completely shit the bed when the digital transmission encountered an error. Plus I hate touch screens in cars.
Re: New cars are just for rich people now
#54If you're purchasing a new vehicle for over $40k, you're getting scammed IMO. There's a lot of great electric and hybrid vehicles with good reliability history. But if you want to look like a _____ in a lifted dodge ram, well, we'll be happy to give you plenty of room on the road to roll your coal.
Do they actually exist on dealer lots now? For a while there, big cars and pickups were the only ones available. And dealerships were marking up electric cars so high that manufacturers got mad and started threatening them. https://www.motor1.com/news/569524/hyundai-genesis-avoid-dea...
Re: New cars are just for rich people now
#55EVs are the way to go right now. Between the "fleet" loophole for federal credits, state credits, free charging for 2-3 years in some cases, discounted charging at night, manufacturers trying to get rid of the EVs that didn't succeed, no sales tax in some states. It's probably 50% cheaper than an ICE car
can you please link an ev that's cheaper than a 26k total cost of ownership over a 10y period(excluding registration) I bought a midsized sedan in 2019, 10y warranty, 17k out the door. I tried to justify the cost of an ev, the cheapest I could find was 32k after credits.
People don't buy EVs in the US to be economical. That's not a thing yet. It's something for relatively rich people to do as a status symbol or for luxury, since most EVs are fairly luxurious.
Re: New cars are just for rich people now
#56> Back in 2017, if you wanted a car that cost less than $20,000, you had 11 options. Fast forward to March of 2023, and that list had been narrowed to only two. The story here is just “inflation happened”
Car inflation, specifically. This is the same as saying that car prices have gone up.
Re: New cars are just for rich people now
#57Meanwhile the average price of an EV has dropped $10,000 over the last 12 months. https://insideevs.com/news/666533/average-ev-transaction-pri... The average EV price is not yet less than the average internal combustion vehicle price, but it's getting close. TCO for the average EV is almost certainly less than TCO for the average ICE vehicle.
A correction from an inflated peak all across 2022 when chip shortages starved supply and gas prices surged EV demand. Production for many of the highly sought-after models is only now starting to catch up.
I gave up on the idea of a Toyota Corolla Hybrid ($23K) when they said there was an 8 month wait list for one.
Re: New cars are just for rich people now
#58They say there are fewer new cars available at $21k today than in 2017. Did they take into account inflation? $21k in Jan 2017 is nearly $26k Jan 2023. There seems to be plenty of new cars that cost that amount.
Inflation has gone up in no small part due to cars. They’re one of the biggest factors and people who aren’t buying them or driving heavily have seen far lower rates of inflation.
Inflation has gone up due to the reckless money printing, car prices just reflect this fact.
Re: New cars are just for rich people now
#59If you're purchasing a new vehicle for over $40k, you're getting scammed IMO. There's a lot of great electric and hybrid vehicles with good reliability history. But if you want to look like a _____ in a lifted dodge ram, well, we'll be happy to give you plenty of room on the road to roll your coal.
Show me an electric passenger truck that can pull 20,000 pounds.
Re: New cars are just for rich people now
#60I think people tend to miss an important aspect of this conversation:
Cars as a whole are massively much more reliable for a lot longer than they used to, making used cars way more viable for most people.
Even the traditionally less-reliable brands are not exploding at 70k miles like they did 15 or 20 years ago.