Why there may be no return to ‘normal’ for the U.S. used vehicle market
cnbc.com
cnbc.com
Part of the problem, in America at least, is what a minimally viable car is these days. You can’t really find compact cars. I believe there is still the Mistubishi Mirage and the Nissan Versa, but most cars are at least 30 grand new.
Still, I'd love to see more "low tech" cars produced. There was the Renault Twiggy (which I own and love), and now there is the Citroen AMI but sadly the twizy was one seat behind the other (though it could go up to 80km/h (100km/hour when you reflash the firmware)), and the Ami has two seats side by side but is limited to 45km/hour.
If it lasts much longer it's going to be like Orange Juice. People will simply grow up without a car, and that will be their normal. The reduction in car demand will be permanent (demand destruction).
(Orange Juice used to be a basic part of breakfast and was normally always stocked in a typical fridge. High prices made that stop, and now an entire generation views orange juice as a treat rather than a staple.)
If my last in-office experience ~5 years ago is any indication, that's already pretty common. A good portion of the younger employees had never owned a car, some didn't even have a drivers license. This was in The Mission district of SF.
Having grown up in a small village, requiring you to have a car, I can not imagine my life without a car
Add to that that a lot of young people in big cities don't even have a driving license.
Obviously it depends a lot on where you live. A lot of places in Europe still require you to have a car to get around.
Now, with forced RTO, it looks like I may be forced to buy a car in order to do the commute. That's like a $25-50k hit in one fell swoop. I can't really look for an alternative job in town, because all the other employers are likely to expect me to also commute.
I could look for a different remote-only job, but there aren't that many around for DevOps Engineer types. If I was a Software Development Engineer, that would be much easier.
I'm not sure what I'm going to do. I'm not sure what I can feasibly do.
I think I may just be screwed.
In SF that's nothing new. My family lived there in the 80s and my mom tells me that while we had a car, they never used it because it was a pain to find parking but it was very easy to catch the bus that came by every 5 minutes.
Right? Especially if you consider all the short-drive destinations for recreational activities the rent certainly charges for.
Stopping doing something stupid that was bad for us (progress!) reframed as a sign of poverty and societal collapse from "the good old days".
How does that work? In the U.K. my insurance is $200 a year!
Is that a normal price or something extreme
- A car crash in the US can generate million dollar hospital bills. Personal liability cover of $2million is standard.
- American regulators require air bags to detonate quicker which might 10x collision repair costs.
- Americans are rich, and drive very expensive cars.
- Americans drive many more miles, which increases risk.
- US driving tests have significantly lower standards than the UK.
My bet is that it's due to insane medical expenses and death liability, which can easily have claims into the hundreds of thousands and millions (if your coverage even goes that high)