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Comment by eikenberry | Hacker News Reader

The author doesn't even say not to get a car. He says don't optimize your car purchase for something ("schlep a bunch of kids far away") you almost never need it for. Optimize for the common use case. So buy a small car for day to day and rent the mini-van for those occasions.

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This doesn't work for rural and suburban America. What are you going to do, drive half an hour to pick up your other car? And spend another half hour waiting? That's incredibly inconvenient and costly.

The car-agnostic ideal won't work outside of major cities. The backbone of America is car travel. People outside cities have more space and more stuff. They expect hauling and utility function in their vehicles. This isn't changing.

Maybe if you can convince suburbanites to downsize, you might have a point. But that's also a city-centric viewpoint imposed by limited space and desire to move easily. Neither of those things are desired in the suburbs.

City dwellers don't get it because they don't live that life.

> This doesn't work for rural and suburban America. What are you going to do, drive half an hour to pick up your other car? And spend another half hour waiting? That's incredibly inconvenient and costly.

Maybe. Maybe not. The point is to do the exercise for your use case. If it costs you 1.5 hours and rental fees to get a minivan and you need it once a year, that's one side of the scale. On the other side you have purchase, insurance, maintenance, depreciation, storage and fuel costs.

The point is to be honest with both sides of the scale and to actually do the comparison rather than taking an automatic answer "I need to drive extra kids to camp sometimes, so I must own a minivan." Maybe. Maybe not. Just be conscious about the choice, not automatic.

Just so I can get an idea of the magnitude of the number, I am making an estimation. Please point out any egregiously incorrect numbers.

Price difference between smaller car and larger car: $15000

Lifetime of car: 8 years

Frequency the larger car is needed: once per month

Additional time to pick up and drop off rental: 3 hours

Money saved per hour: $52

So it seems that if someone values their time more than ~$50/hour, they should buy the larger vehicle.

Edit: Forgot to take into account the rental fee: $150

Money saved per hour: $2

It looks like it doesn't make sense to rent, as buying would allow the convenience of using the larger vehicle any time, especially if it is more than once a month.

I think your car lifetime is off by a factor of 2, and you're neglecting that a larger car will likely be less fuel-efficient and may have higher maintenance costs, but otherwise seems like the right ballpark. For something once per month, that seems like a reasonable conclusion for you.

I have a mid-sized car, and I go to Tahoe 3-4 times a year, and probably end up being the driver 2 or 3 of those times. For me, it makes sense to rent a 4WD/AWD SUV with snow tires for those 2 or 3 winter trips, especially since I'll split the cost of the rental among the friends who ride with me.

There's also the comfort/style/happiness factor: I like my car and generally don't like driving big bulky vehicles that are high off the ground; having an SUV as my primary vehicle would make me unhappy.

Do... do people really not drive to different places to have fun anymore or... is fun dead? There's a slightly bit more to life than just utilitarian living. In a 1 hour drive radius to where I live, I have countless many national parks, trails and nature reserves. That doesn't even include the beach, where I go to maybe too often. I get it that they're in the dead and cold lands of Canada... but there's more fun to be had that's outside the city that's kid friendly. Cannuck land has national parks, trails and stuff, doesn't it? I thought it did. Then there's all the "commercial" fun things to do with all that money they've saved... sigh...

Look around when you drive at how many other cars have more than 2 people. Here 90% plus have a single occupant, and 1-2% have 3 or more people/kids

Actually, I legit played that game on a road trip since this conversation came up with a friend right before we left (2017 timeframe). I counted and kept track. Through Colorado north bound i-25, roughly 60% were more than 1 occupant. Through Wyoming, then west bound i-80 was about 40% more than 1. Didn't do it on the return trip. Throughout east coast Florida city driving doing it every now and then (especially at traffic stops) ranges from 40-60%. Rainy days seem to be high single occupant days from what I've noticed.

Sure, anecdotal, not perfectly scientific or even at a good enough scale... but I don't really believe the 10% idea. I'd love to see where their scientific data is on that.

Not quite the same thing, but to get the average occupancy per car, they apparently just ask people.

https://www.energy.gov/eere/vehicles/articles/fotw-1040-july...

https://nhts.ornl.gov/

If you used the service linked in the article, it would cost you about $60 to get a car for a 5 hour 50 mile trip every month. If it takes you one hour instead, you're saving $90 an hour. And since you just have to get to the closest suitable car, 1 hour is probably more than enough.

And I think most people would trade an hour driving for $50.

Does that include insurance? Seems like it doesn't, according to their site.

3 hours to pick-up a rental ?

You can add "additional time to park in the city because you have a big-ass car" to your calculations :)

This was based on the parent's comment of half an hour to drive to the rental place, and a half hour wait. To err on the conservative side, assuming that this adds another half hour to drive to the destination, this is 1.5 hours for picking up, and 1.5 hours for dropping off.

> You can add "additional time to park in the city because you have a big-ass car" to your calculations :)

I doubt those in the suburbs will have any trouble parking. That's a city problem.

The result gets worse when you consider that $15K is probably not how much extra you would spend for a larger car, unless your two options were subcompact and full-size. Also, 8 years is 2/3 of what a typically abused car lasts, if you optimize for ROI you can easily get twice that.

What about the cost of gas? Larger cars often have worse miles per gallon.

Ah, good point.

Let's say 10,000 miles a year, 30 MPG for small car and 15 MPG for large car, and $3/gallon gas. That give an extra $1000 in gas per year for the large car, or an extra $83 per month if a large car is needed once a month, or $28/hour saved for the inconvenience of the hours spent picking up and dropping off the rental.

Either way, the delta is much smaller than what I was expecting, in the range of a couple of hundred a month at the high end, depending on which way the numbers swing. It can be something that's not worth worrying about, for someone who has a middle class income.

> 30 MPG for small car and 15 MPG for large car

FWIW, 15 MPG would be low for my F150. A Volvo wagon gets 25 MPG, for example. This ain't the 70s :).

Definitely all the numbers have lots of leeway, and you can play with different scenarios to get different results. However, changing the MPG from 15 to 25 would make only a small difference ($17/mon difference in gas), and my point is still valid.

Assuming all else is equal. But what if you need to move further from work to get a house with parking space for your extra vehicle? Then you should also account for your extra commute time.

I think he's saying if you really need a larger vehicle once a month or so to the point where you'd have to rent one, buy the larger vehicle.

Honestly, why not? I grew up in the suburbs in a two car family, and on a couple road trips we just opted to go to enterprise and rent a giant van to better fit all of us and our crap for a week and keep the mileage off the regular cars. It wasn't a novel thing, either, a few families I knew growing up would do things like that for traveling.

The delays and uncertainty associated with renting make that a total non-starter for parents with busy schedules. The only practical option for most of us is to buy a bigger vehicle. Or buy two: a big one and a small one.

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