The rise of the disposable car
bloomberg.com
bloomberg.com
Speaking as a master diesel mechanic, this is a deleterious line of thinking for anyone with less than a few million dollars. Every car has 20 years of parts, and most Japanese cars have closer into 50 years of parts. Any engine built after 2010 will likely last half a million miles or more as a feature of quality control and automation alone.
Maintaining a well running vehicle long term with a local mechanic is always cheaper than buying a new car every 5 years, and just because insurance says its "totaled" doesn't mean it isnt fixable and safe to drive.
The average age of a car is like 13 years old. Most people are definitely not buying new ones every 5 years.
The real blocker I dont mention is time. Your shop will need that car for a few days and shipping will take time too. At some point the wait isnt worth it anymore. The upside is, 2 used Toyotas are still cheaper than a new one new Toyota
The other thing that people don't talk about as much is the parts market got seriously messed up during COVID and still hasn't fully recovered. It's more common now for repair parts to either be unavailable or enormously marked up. Like a particular repair might only take a few hours and what should be a few hundred bucks in parts, but the car gets totaled because one of the parts is unavailable or inexplicably costs thousands and the shop doesn't want the liability of hacking together an alternative solution. Especially if the missing part is an ECM or sensor or something else that might make the car fail an inspection.
I don't think anybody is replacing my transmission for $500.
Did you mean the whole job for less than $5000?
There isn't an automation in the world that will take enough of the car apart for you. Or at least my mechanic friends haven't found it.
Will keep waiting for AI to grow itself some arms.
I knew a kid changing turbos in Mk4 VWs on his lunch break. He had time to drive home, replace a turbo, and drive back to the shop.
Shop was still going to charge a few hours.
Labour last time I had front shocks and struts done? 3 hours not including the alignment.
Friend's brake job? 2.5 hours - they were 4 wheel disk, what was the mechanic doing for the other 2h?
On most cars the transmission is probably the biggest failure liability- I pretty much only drive manuals for that reason, doing a clutch is a lot cheaper than replacing an automatic, and the better you are at driving it the less you need to do it.
What "automation" innovations have lowered the cost of unbolting a heavy transmission out the back of an engine and attaching a new one??
As best I can tell, the process has been unchanged in a workshop for nigh on 40 to 50 years at this point - it's humans with wrenches and a car lift. I want to see this shop that will swap me a trans for under 500 bucks too...
A transmission rebuild refreshes consumables like bronze bearings and seals, damaged pinions are replaced, and the rest are machined back to precision spec. This is cheaper than a used transmission. I paid less than a thousand for this service, when the quality used goes for $4k.
No, it required a whole new headlight assembly, $800 plus labor.
Funnily enough, the car got totalled shortly after, before I had decided to go ahead with the repair. Someone hit my SO as she was in a roundabout, and the impact moved the car several meters. Cracked the carbon fiber chassis. Estimated repair cost was 1.5x price of a new car.
So, never got the pleasure of finding out how much labor would have been for replacing the headlight unit. I'm assuming it would have been a lot more than for replacing a light bulb...
Although im starting to suspect my mechanic is taking me for a ride
Also: It's a hard top convertible. The mechanicism stopped fully opening or closing. Bummer. Two repair shops gave ridiculous quotes to troubleshoot and repair.
Using a scanner (generic OBD II scanner with BMW's specific codes), we narrowed the search. The ultimate fix was just two $15 switches. Being noobs, it took us some effort to detach and reattach the hard top.
I don't mind the labor effort (costs). It is a BMW after all. But it's ridiculous that these cars can't report their failing electronic bits.
I have a 2018 Subaru Outback. I got in a fender bender that caused the right front headlight unit to snap near the top bolt where it attached to the car. I found out when my car failed inspection.
I called the dealership and they quoted me $500 just for the headlamp. I went on rock auto and bought one for $250 and installed it. I had to take the front bumper off the car to install the headlamp. Passed inspection after I installed it though so it was all good. Just can’t believe they were marking up parts like that.
what exactly were the rivian engineers thinking?
I take advantage to your comment to write this PSA (that probably you already know):
All transmissions require maintenance, and even manual ones. Those automatic tagged as 'maintenance free' from the brand aren't, and if you call the manufacturer of that transmission, Getrag, ZF, or whatever it is, they should say which ATF and filters it needs and in what interval.
If you do maintenance with an independent technician (not a dealership or a "Jiffy Lube") with some good reputation, they probably help with that
[insert rant here about BMW's "lifetime" fluid in the 4L30E that they used in E36s]
Checking that state of the fluid isn't difficult, as is bright red when it's new, and turns more and more brown when it's used, and it's mostly used normally between 50k and 100l AFAIK.
Buying the required fluid, and filter if needed, is as easy as looking it in the internet or going your local AutoZone, O'Reillys, AAP, or whatever you have near btw
Yeah, but getting to the fluid to see it is hard. They stopped putting in dipsticks, so hopefully there's a check plug somewhere you can get to.
I just drain mines and refill to specified amount, I've never once cared for a check plug and just change it every ~50k miles on most of my cars, regardless of color. It's usually not an expensive fluid.
I mean: Automotive fluids tend to shrink over time, for a wide variety of reasons. (And sometimes, they get bigger, which is usually even worse.)
How do you know that it has the correct level?
1. The drain hole is below the fill hole - open drain hole and empty using good old fashioned gravity.
2. Close drain hole.
3. Open fill hole.
4. Fill till it starts leaking out the fill hole.
5. Close the fill hole.
Not especially complex most of the time! Transmission fluid does not really shrink much over time, its a sealed system and it doesn't burn off the way engine oil can. Just doing it at regular intervals like 50k miles is absolutely fine on a lot of cars. If you really do care about hitting some specific quantity of fluid - you know exactly how much you are pouring into the fill hole, you can even measure exactly what came out the drain hole, but this probably is not remotely necessary.
On the E36, which has no prescribed transmission service interval or dip stick, there are two transmission sumps -- and only one of them has a drain plug. Replacing the fluid means pulling one sump off completely...and pre-filling it prior to reinstallation.
On the Honda, which has a regular interval for transmission fluids and a dip stick, the fill plug is on top of the transmission. It would be a bad thing to fill it to that level. (I just refill using the dip stick tube.)
Also, I'd like to add that I am envious of the fact that you have never experienced a leak in any automatic transmission.
That's why I was wondering how to contact GM about the 4L30E that they built and sold to BMW, as was suggested.
Not all modern transmissions have a filter
* You control when you sell and pay tax, sell in small amounts when not working to minimize tax, compounding gains are not taxed until sale, death allows tax free passing to children.
I wont even get into salary sacrifice!
https://www.reddit.com/media?url=https%3A%2F%2Fexternal-prev...
if you can find a good mechanic friend, and pay with beer and pizza, you'd be much more likely to be successful.
I keep seeing manufacturers spam in my engineering newsletters that point towards batteries that last 500,000 to maybe a million miles. And I know that electric motors can go that far. Potentially talking about cars that last 40-50 years.
You can imagine that makes the investor class unhappy, cause maybe the number of cars sold will drop.
The engine block and rotating assembly might. But all the crap that is bolted on won't.
Several engines are known for having the turbocharger fail. Which is now integrated in the exhaust manifold.
Timing components are junkier and junkier these days. And somewhere in the 2000's, some of the manufacturers decided to make complicated systems where cylinders deactivate to allow for fuel savings, and those are all an unreliable mess.
It's really important to have some "pride of ownership" in an older car, and fix anything that isn't perfect immediately- so they don't build up over time and make you feel like the whole vehicle isn't nice to use or own anymore.
I think a lot of waste goes into maintaining cars cosmetically.
Can you give some examples? The only safety innovation I can think of recently the side airbags. The backup camera, which is a huge improvement to backing up accidents was probably over 15 years ago.
Regardless of tech like changes in crumple zone design, you also can't negate the safety benefits of substantially better brakes, handling, driver comfort, and road visibility from a better designed car made with higher end parts and materials.
"Totaled" to an insurance company means they think the cost of repair at their contracted rates is more than the cost of paying out the "value" of the car. It is a business assessment, not an assessment of the vehicle.
In Illinois, you can only retain a totaled vehicle if it was hail damage or it's a "vintage (9+ yr old) car.
It's not your car anymore, so obviously you don't get to drive it.
Boats and airplanes are just as reliable when old as new because they're maintained well- and cars are the same. If you maintain an old car well, it doesn't really ever wear out, and stays as reliable as a new car.
It's also massively cheaper to maintain an old car well then to buy new ones even if you pay someone else to do it. People complain when they get a $1000 repair bill every few years for an older car so they will say "it's getting unreliable" and then consider paying up to $1000 a month for a new one. There is a middle ground where you pay maybe $1000-2000 every year to stay on top of stuff, and it stays reliable indefinitely.
Moreover, an older high end car is just so much nicer than a new car in the same price range. You can buy a well maintained low mileage older but high end Porsche, Audi, etc. for well under $10k on Craigslist these days and you'd have to be a car nerd to know it's not a new model. Is it cheap to maintain well? Not exactly, but it will be 1/10th the cost of a car payment on a new low end economy car, and you're driving a high end car. Plus, when you buy a 20 year old high end car and maintain it well, it will appreciate rather than depreciate in value. My daily driver is an older Porsche, and in 3 years of driving it, it has probably appreciated in value enough to make all of the maintenance, insurance, etc. free- basically a free car if you don't count the space in my garage it uses to keep it nice.
For really critical things like through hulls below the waterline on boats, plastic pipes like glass filled nylon (Marelon) are considered safer and more reliable than metal, because they never corrode, and are much physically stronger than a comparable weight metal part.
I grew up with 1970s European cars where every plastic or rubber part would fail eventually, but by the 90s the materials got much better.
I have an oldish (1997) exotic car as a toy. It cost less upfront than a new Toyota Camry. At a car meet, I overheard someone say to their friend "Man, if I had infinite money, this is what I'd get". I definitely do not own a money printing machine.
Maintenance is something else but I do the work myself so it's not bad. And the fun thing about old low volume exotics is that they are mostly parts bin cars. Tons of shared components are easily available.
It's funny the general reactions I get- young men try to race me at stoplights, and strangers on the street will often give me a defiant fist or middle finger, as if I represent the wealthy exploitative class, in what is likely the cheapest car that has driven by in half an hour.
I enjoy working on cars, so that helps make it cheap.
It was uncomfortable at first having people oogle over the car and make assumptions, but the number of conversations it has started with people genuinely interested in it definitely outweighs the awkwardness.
People just assume that anything sporty looking is ruinously expensive.
If safety is important, someone with cheap new economy car money can instead get into a high end vehicle well known for its safety and quality, still for a lot less money.
Sure, if you are going to compare something over 30+ years old, and from a manufacturer not known for safety or quality in the first place, it will be a lot more dangerous.
Still, even with old stuff it varies. Late 80s Mercedes and Volvos, even base models, for example had most of the modern safety tech that other cars didn't see for a very long time.
Weight is also a huge factor- a big old truck with no regard for safety in its design is still a lot safer than a light economy car in a collision. Probably the safest cars on the market are still the over-engineered 20 year old full sized luxury SUVs that weigh as much as a 3/4 ton truck and have tons of heavy offroad gadgets they don't put on SUVs anymore.
Once in a while I see repair videos on cars from mechanics in Florida, Texas, Arizona, or Southern California. The car will be 15 years old and everything underneath will look entirely brand-new (minus some dust and scratches) compared to a brand-new car here that has seen only a winter or two.
Are you sure every car? Some of the higher end European cars have a hot dipped galvanized frame. Volvo advertised pretty heavily that the 1980s 740s were galvanized… I’m pretty sure I’ve seen some that ended up out here on the west coast from the midwest and you can’t undo a suspension bolt, but the chassis was fine.
You could always buy a used car out of state and drive it back.
The only cars with aluminum frames are luxury/sports cars, and the Honda Insight from like 20 years ago. Some newer cars have aluminum bodies (F-150?) but not aluminum frames which makes no sense to me. Steel car bodies last a _very_ long time these days, compared to the frames.
...and then they implement some new laws which state that cars older than year X are no longer allowed within zone Y because of emissions (think 'ULEZ' in London or variations on the 'Milieuzone' in several Dutch cities). A few years later they update X to (X + a few years) and expand Y to (Y + the rest of where you want to go). They'll also write into law that you can not adapt your car to abide by the required emissions standards, no no, buy a newer car you shall.
This is common practice in many European countries, if there is no US equivalent yet there will be one soon enough.
But a frame. Can't really replace a frame. You can _sometimes_ repair it. You can buy some time by paying for an oil-based undercoating every year, but finding someone who will do it affordably _and_ do a good job is hard. (It's a messy, annoying job.)
I sort of want congress to mandate stainless steel or aluminum frames in all cars sold in the US, and I don't even care if it makes the cars cost more. It won't happen via state laws because the auto manufacturers are big campaign donors around here.
I’ve started buying high mileage cars that are roughly 2 years old. Essentially off lease vehicles, but more likely some sort of corporate vehicle.
Rust is by far my biggest enemy. I’ve never had an engine or transmission go. Really haven’t even had any major components go either.
But rust, rust just kills everything under the car.
Paint alone will chip due to gravel and start rusting away.
Are you saying the "rust belt" region of the US, named for its history of steel manufacturing, is an area where cars rust more? Cars rust more where salt is used to deice roads. Salted roads overlap with the rust belt, but they are not related.
The big problem here is survivorship bias - the cars that did last will likely keep lasting. You see this with notoriously terrible cars like 1980s Jaguars. The owners have persisted through various catastrophic failures that would make ordinary people abandon the vehicle, so you end up with a subset of Jags that run nicely and have all the engineering problems sorted out by the after market.
The designation of a car as "totaled" is often an illusion and there is a thriving parallel market of auction houses, repair shops, salvage titling companies, and resellers who take the "ruined" cars, fix them, and sell them on the used market.
Insurance companies could deal directly with the lower cost shops but just like the Concur Travel cancer that is spreading across corporate America there are extremely perverse incentives between executives and boards to keep the system the way it is with all of the major players dealing only with each other.
There is probably an auctioneer within 30 minutes of where you are right now who will sell you a "total loss" car that you can repair, or have repaired, for a minuscule fraction of what an insurance contractor will charge-- often for less than the insurance payout (to both you and the adjuster).
Like all things fucked in our economy, the trend of exorbitant repair costs took off when private equity started buying up the regional insurance repair contractor near-monopolies like Service King (Carlyle Group) and Caliber Collision (Leonard Green).
It's selective definancialization, and I love it. Same reason why buying tax foreclosures is such a great bargain: you don't have to compete with bank-financed buyers!
The guy at the yard said any car without damage to the frame or drive train is likely to be picked up by a used car shop or private resellers who do the repairs themselves and flip them.
I think the real reason they total a car at 60-70% is because the cost is just an estimate. They don't want to keep sending an estimator out to approve more $$ in repairs, costing everyone time and money, and ultimately spending more than it would cost to just buy out the customer -- who, in many cases, might just like a big check to buy what they want, rather than weeks fixing their 'old' car.
Insurance companies also like to drag their heels to punish you for standing up for yourself and selecting a high-quality bodyshop. In the case of a minor front-end accident for a car in my household, they trickled the money out in bits and pieces. Every time the shop countered the insurance company's estimate, the insurance company would take 2 days to send an adjustor out, trickle out a few more dollars, wash, rinse, repeat. It's why I keep rental car coverage for our vehicles even when we don't need it -- to hold the insurance company's feet to the fire, so they feel the financial pain, too, when they hold your car hostage for a month.
Most rental car coverage only lasts 30 days maximum (sometimes it’s even less). It’s unlikely that carrying rental car coverage does anything in practice when netted against the increase in your premiums and in light of the limited coverage plus the discounted rental rates insurance companies get from rental car companies. I would imagine your car insurance provider is ecstatic that you pay an extra $X amount a year to “stick it to them.”
Tell us more about this.
The opposite. With cars reaching much more advanced ages today, when a collision happens it's a write-off.
The modern car isn't 'disposable'. In fact, all statistics point to us holding onto cars longer today than ever before. Today's cars are the most durable that they've ever been.
As such, it makes no sense to repair a totaled vehicle. You should instead buy a comparable used vehicle.
But saying the word 'Disposable' is pretty bad with regards to the headline. It doesn't capture the full effect of what the stats are showing. That is, we are all keeping vehicles for longer. Longer miles, longer life.
Repair costs for old vehicles always grows as old parts tend to be harder to find (factories have shifted production to newer vehicles. So you are forced to look for scrap). Meanwhile, older cars lose more and more value as they age.
I sometimes wonder how much the carbon footprint of the auto industry would change if people preferred to fix them instead of throwing the whole thing away just because of a fender bender or an expensive part broke
I don't see any reasonable way around this, though. If I have a car that I could replace for $8K plus the cost of replicating some mods [CarPlay head unit, tow hitch, and heated seats] and would salvage for $1K, I can't reasonably expect someone else's insurance company to pay $12.5K in costs (for repairs plus rentals/loss of use plus diminished value plus incidentals) to put me back in a place where I then have a crash-repaired car worth $7K plus $1K in cash in my pocket for diminished value. What other carbon reduction could be bought for that extra $3K in costs vs. repairing our damaged car?
From the at-fault driver's and their insurance company's point of view: the driver's negligence caused around $8-9K of direct damages to me plus several hundred in incidental/related expenses. That's what the driver is liable for (and the insurance company on the hook to cover as per their agreement), not a $12+K figure for a liability for damages amount that was thousands lower.
The problem with that logic is the assumption that the car can be replaced for $8K. To some (maybe most) people, cars are non-fungible and there is a significant amount of personal, non-transferrable value in one particular vehicle, due e.g. to the memories acquired in connection with it.
Part of the reason that people get upset when the insurance company decides to declare their car totaled is that the replacement value offered is significantly lower than they would have accepted for the car had it not been in an accident-- The actuarial value assigned isn't properly valuing the intangibles.
Edit to add: Or, in other words, if the market-clearing price of "comparable" vehicles represented the actual value of the car to its owner, the car would have already been on the used market. The fact that it wasn't signals that there must be some premium over the market price that's necessary to make the owner whole.
If it was my fairly modified (by me) ‘66 Mustang, that would be very difficult to get to a settlement figure that I’d find fair.
When another driver is at fault and you elect to not use your insurance company for whatever reason. In that case, you didn't have any opportunity to pre-arrange with this other driver's insurance company and you have to fall back on the law as a backstop.
As it stands I’ll probably try to get a mini van and put vinyl floors in.
It also does not price in the significant risk that a used car of this vintage significant undisclosed defects that are hard to detect by inspection at purchase.
In theory (and I think in practice), the second is priced into the used car market already.
Do you think that the other insurance should be on the hook to repair the remains of your car into a functioning 1990 Honda Accord?
Or is paying to replace the car with like sufficient? (I hate it, but I have to agree that it’s far more practical to allow the replacement.)
A different insurance model would be necessary to adopt a repair orientation. Maybe it's the equivalent of paying more to be "green," except that consumers don't really consider it as an option when they buy a car insurance policy. It seems like this kind of option would justify higher insurance premiums, so maybe a major insurer could consider promoting one as environmentally friendly.
On the insurance side, they're motivated by finances. If the quote to fix a car is $10k and the car itself was only worth $8k, the insurance company is just going to give you $8k to find yourself an equivalent car to the one you "totaled". There's no intrinsic motivation for the insurance company to go for the $10k repair? Maybe allow them to have carbon credits or something for spending an extra $2k to keep the same car on the road? How do you tease out how much of a carbon win this is? (and who is in charge of deciding that?)
So then on the car manufacturer side, they're motivated by sales/ brand reliability. Maybe if cars were more repair-friendly that would help change the equation? That comes with the potential trade-off of new cars being more expensive and/or less reliable if they can't be as tightly integrated as they currently are. So if car manufacturers are motivated to make the most reliable/cheap car, they are going to forgo making them less repairable.
If you try and get both sides of this equation onto the same page, I don't know that you could trust that there wouldn't be some under the table shenanigans going on without making things so overregulated that both new cars and car repairs are both more expensive?
Of course the problem is as you said how do you price carbon emissions.
But, that already isn't what happens. A totaled vehicle is almost never thrown away. They're sold for salvage value. Some of them are repaired, and sold as rebuilt vehicles. Others are stripped for parts that are recycled to fix other vehicles. And anything left over is recycled for raw material.
In the past body shops would realign frames, pull body work back into shape, and weld in new pieces but it's just not safe and practical to do that with unibody vehicles even if you did have the tooling and machinery to ensure that it was done right and everything is actually back into factory spec and alignment.
It's almost a shame that the electric vehicle 'skateboard' concept (essentially a rolling chassis in industrial/truck vehicle terminology) didn't really get anywhere - but I have to imagine that design constraints, extra weight from attaching the body to the chassis, and other relevant factors that pushed us into unibody vehicles in the first place also made concept unfeasible.
Unibody cars are repaired safely all the time, whether for collision or rust repair. It may have been easier in the body-on-frame days, but it safe and practical now still.
When most cars are "totaled," the car itself is sold for salvage. If it can be fixed relatively easily, the car will be purchased at a salvage auction, fixed, and resold.
If it can't be easily fixed, the parts that can be salvaged will be resold to other autobody shops.
While the consumer might be "throwing away" the car, the car itself isn't generally being thrown in a landfill until all of the functional parts are reused in some way.
One was charged thousands to fix a snow sensor. We don't get snow in Sydney.
Guy who runs a fleet of luxury vehicles said the sensors are cheap and simply fail after five or so years.
My own VW Passat randomly failed to start occasionally with some mysterious light on. (I forget the details). I sold it.
Many people are happy to have a mismatched bumper or hood in exchange for $700 in their pocket.
Only in Texas and Colorado. Almost all states require cars to be declared a total loss before that.
The most common definitions are
1. The Total Loss Formula, which is when the value of the car is less than or equal to the repair costs plus the salvage value of the vehicle
2. 75% threshold -- which is when the repair costs are 75% of the price to replace your vehicle
https://www.carinsurance.com/Articles/total-loss-thresholds....
We generally get about 8 years out of a car before we start running into larger repairs. This tends to become the point we decide to trade it in for something new.
I’m holding onto my ancient POS because it’s impossible apparently to find the above. Everything is new and full of drive by wire, telephony, spyware crap. Oh and the prices… come on!
I never was a car buff, I wish I had been as it definitely appears we have ended an era and I mourn isolated from the gear heads.
Our CR-V is such a great value I don't actually understand how they turn a profit.
People also build their own cars from scratch. It isn't as well known, but it is done. Again not a good use of time or money but if you want something specific that isn't on the market you have no choice.
It still has newer features like lane centering and radar cruise control. However, it's a good, simple, reliable car at a much more reasonable price point.
As for feature creep - this is inevitable because all 99.99% of consumers care about are features and price. It's like people asking for a "non-smart TV". It's not going to happen, ever. Consumers who care about that aren't a percent of a percent of the market.
It has knobs and buttons for everything you want to use while driving, including volume, transport controls (on both the steering wheel and below the screen), radio tuner, and climate control.
The closest alternative I looked at was the Hyundai Santa Cruz, which was more expensive. All of its buttons except those on the steering wheel and column stalks are capacitive nightmares with no tactile feedback. That alone was enough to help make my decision.
Maybe you don't want to get your hands dirty. While changing out a turn signal light can be a pain, you can do it, thus saving a lot of money. Accomplishing a difficult job is a very good feeling. If you don't have the required tools, rent or borrow them.
There are limitations, I tend to drive my vehicles to higher mileage. I won't change out half-shafts anymore or automatic window motors, as I have in the past many times. (I pay the garage to do it now.) But this is due to age, not how difficult the job is. Auto garages are opportunist, they'll charge whatever the market can stand, just like the new car sales. Until we make them change, they won't.
Humans suck at driving: https://jakeseliger.com/2019/12/16/maybe-cars-are-just-reall...
(Anecdotally, I'm outside Harrisburg, and there are no self-driving cars in... this state? People drive their cars just like cave people did, with their hands on the wheel!)
Of note, the article mentions your sentiment near the conclusion:
> Perhaps one day we’ll all whizz around in self-driving cars and accidents will be rare. But that’s still a ways off.
Hell, out there you've still got people using horse and carriage.
Granted they got SF working too, which is pretty varied terrain but it took a lot of training. I guess we can roll it out city by city but will they ever recoup the cost?
Availability and mass adoption are two very entirely different things.
The time in which people take most commutes by any kind of car is: today... 51% of people commute by car currently. That took 136 years.
'most of the time' for 'most people' is quite a high bar. That's a lot of travel, for about 4 billion people. A few people in Phoenix taking one after a night at the bar doesn't even to begin to scratch that surface.
We're very much still at the 'Carl Benz demoing his horseless carriage' stage of self-driving cars.
However right now they are not ready for that. They don't work in all conditions and we don't have unbiased safety studies.
For example, airbags have proven to drastically increase safety, yet almost a half-century later they’re still not required by many countries across 2 and a half continents. Governments only require safety equipment as far as their population can afford it.
Global automakers have, and still do, make different vehicles for different markets. And further, some only make vehicles for developing economies.
For example, Pakistan required airbags in 2022, and they found necessary to do so because automakers were still making vehicles without them. https://propakistani.pk/2021/12/27/pakistan-to-ban-cars-with...
It's incredible to me how many people honestly believe they can predict the future, when the future is so clearly unpredictable. Even while you acknowledge that everyone's predictions were too optimistic, in the very same sentence you insist on an optimistic prediction.
Compared to the entire world this is VERY anomalous, so I think we're still pretty far from "most people" using self-driving cars.
Unfortunately most cities in the USA have parking minimums so even if a market change occurs and they are all empty the lots will stick around for a while until they are no longer legally required.
All of which means we need nearly as much parking in the future. Sure we save a little because the car will leave your immediate area (read CO2 and other emissions) for free parking out of sight, but they are still parked. You will want it parked somewhat close to you because you never know when you will have a family emergency and have to leave early.
Or at the very least, the price would go up a lot. Who cares about the cost, when the value of the sold good is so high? Why sell it cheap? I note that Waymo has no intention of selling the things.
But I don't think there is any manufacturers that rent vehicles for short term and neither there are any rental firms that manufacture their cars...
In the end making things and renting them is different businesses.
https://www.siemens.com/global/en/company/stories/research-t...
https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=40266464
https://eugeneyan.com/writing/simplicity/
“Simplicity is a great virtue but it requires hard work to achieve it and education to appreciate it. And to make matters worse: complexity sells better.” — Edsger Dijkstra
Especially:
Complexity signals more features.
SUVs and smaller trucks are now almost universally moving to 4cyl and 6cyl turbos with iffy CVTs. The channels run by folks with greasy overalls are pretty uniform in saying these vehicles won't last like their predecessors (even the Toyotas).
How are the CVTs in these trucks iffy compared to other CVTs? There's a number of reliable auto makers using CVTs for years, such as Subaru, Honda and even Toyota on their other vehicles. CVT transmissions have been in mass produced cars longer than most of us have been alive.
For example, a dual clutch transmission is complex and expensive, but at the same time, I wouldn't call it better. There's tradeoffs in all types of transmissions. My car might have one, but if I were driving a truck, I don't think I would want a DSG.
"a number of reliable auto makers using CVTs for years" is an utterly valueless statement. It says, proves, disproves, or even merely indicates, nothing.
There are countless reasons for any company to do anything, including for a "reliable" automaker to use a less-reliable part or design.
Both turbos and cvts increase gas mileage. Simple as that. That one thing has become so important that it's now worth sacrificing other things to get it.
When it comes to motor reliability, generally speaking a smaller engine with higher compression running closer to its peak output all the time will have more wear than a slightly larger engine that doesn't have to run at as high of pressures and load percentage. Lower RPMs needed for the same power output means less friction on all the components in the motor. There's a lot of variances in that so it is not exactly a given.
These kind of go away with more modern "eCVTs" which don't rely on belts and hybrid systems which can help even out that peak engine load challenge. But still, turbos will generally reduce your reliability. More moving parts, higher pressures, etc. The questions are, will the increased efficiency balance out the reduced reliability and will the motor reliability be the thing that does the car in at the end.
It sure seems like they would be great for large trucks if they could be made beefy enough.
Sure, one could spend quite a bit of money making it even beefier with more and more exotic materials, but in the end its kind of hard to match the friction efficiency of well-fitting gears directly connecting the torque. You're pretty much guaranteed to encounter more friction on the belt sliding on the cones compared to well lubricated and properly made gears, and more friction means more wear which means shorter life.
But this is kind of the idea of eCVTs. Instead of belts sliding on cones (pulleys), they use motor/generators and novel gearset placements to change how the torque flows through the system. In this way friction is considerably reduced. There are no belts to stretch or wear out.
Isn't the CVT going bad one of the main complaints people have with Subaru? Like at 100,000-150,000 miles. Other than the head gasket issue which was fixed a decade ago? Asking, since I'm in the market for a used vehicle, and the CVT reliability has me hesitant.
Dealers charge $3000 for the job. They install all new valve bodies for about $1200, and for some reason want 8 hours for the job.
I helped a friend do it after watching some YouTube videos, and we just swapped the one bad solenoid. 20k miles later, 120k total, everything is fine.
The problem isn't always the cars even. It's the entire repair model.
If I have choice removed from me, in particular a choice I very much care about, then I’m going to care about owning that car less. The more that happens the more people may view vehicles as pure utility and much easier to walk away from for any reason, especially repair cost. Who cares whether you replace a Chevrolet with a Ford when they are untouchable boxes?
Insurance companies would love this BYW. If they can find a cheaper alternative that’s another brand, you’ll be reimbursed for that, not what you originally bought.
It certainly looks like many small choices are being made towards automobiles being truly disposable.
I think this points to a slightly deeper issue sitting just below "consumer choice", which is "tight coupling."
It sounds like GM has made a tighter-coupling between their vehicle and one particular brand of smartphone, and that's suggestive that other tight-couplings might exist elsewhere the design. The more tightly-coupled parts (to particular brands, form-factors, and proprietary connectors) the harder/more-expensive it will be to keep the overall car-system working over a decade or two as some of its hard-dependencies stop getting built.
So a lack of smartphone choice isn't just annoying, it also suggests something about the designers not planning for long-term maintenance.
Note that as a consumer I don't trust anyone above. Sure GM's app will work great now, but in 3-6 years I expect they will decide drop support for my currently working car in their app. Apple and Google will also change their OS and so the app that does work with my car won't work anymore on new phones. I also expect updates to CarPlay/Android Auto that won't work with my old car in a few years. Nobody in this business wants to provide support for the average car which is currently 12 years old - unless you pay which someone driving a 12+ year old car won't want to do. (GM provides parts for those older cars, but people pay for those parts)
I would highly recommend young people buy a popular model or platform based car and just learn how to do mechanic work. Its fun and rewarding.
Car is currently 19 years old going on 20 and besides the initial amount I bought it for it costs me about 200-300 in parts and fluids to maintain. Hats off to the engineers at Nissian. This thing prints money.
Instead they declare the car totaled and recoup what they can on the other end. If you want to actually _keep_ your totaled car you'll have to pay for it, because it _does_ have value. I had a car "totaled" when it was rear-ended, but it was still drivable and I would have liked to keep it, do some minimal repairs, and just accepted the wonky back end. But to keep it I would have received something $3,000 less on a $10,000 car and it didn't seem worth it.
I don't know if the car was chopped up and helped make other cars whole, or vice versa. Some part of it ended up on a discount used car lot. And that's probably fine. Cars are kind of fungible and declaring a car "totaled" is just a way to take advantage of that and seems like a legitimate efficient-market approach.
Sadly, until something (culture, new player on the market, regulation....) changes, that car will be totalled and scrapped.
On the other hand, most of my close family that I know has a vehicle that is fixable. I know how to do basic stuff like change oil, change a tire or break pads, but I also know how much vehicles are digital and I really don't enjoy that.
I've had friends trade in $30k vehicles with problems for $15k and then be surprised when it's on the dealer website in 7 days for $30k fixed.
it's not.
There are full parking lots with brand new cars that go under press or get disassembled for parts because dealership don’t want sell them at a cheaper prices.
https://www.costulessdirect.com/blog/where-brand-new-unsold-...
From article:
> the unsold cars that are older than two years old, will have no alternative but to be either crushed, dismantled and/or their parts recycled. Want to see for yourself? Do a quick search on Google Maps of Baltimore, Maryland, looking south of Broening Hwy in Dundalk, there you will see a massive expanse of space where many unsold cars are currently parked.
Oh yes, that makes perfect sense, every day they make 100 cars and then scrap more than 50 of them.
The car manufacturing industry can’t stop producing new automobiles because they would have to close their factories and lay off thousands of their workers.
Right, layoffs, that never happens.
The above is why companies try to do just in time manufacturing. However this is always easier on paper than the real world. Those factories need to shutdown for a week-several months every year to repair tools and rearrange for the next model year, and they need some cars saved up for that. In addition other disasters mean sometimes they can't get parts and so there is more reason to have a buffer of unsold cars.
False and false. According to more reputable sources, there are only ~ 1.5 billion cars in the world. And to the many families that own two or more cars in the US, there are many more families that own 0 cars elsewhere in the world...
Seeing a lot with a lot of new cars with delivery wrap still on Google Maps isn't indicative of some new car graveyard, its just showcasing the ignorance of how car imports work. What, did they think a car manufacturing plant in Germany just suddenly teleports cars into dealer lots in the US? Did they think they were delivered by plane?
That is an obvious lie. It is obviously more expensive to produce and scrap a car than to not produce one at all. What you do if demand is low is you produce less. It is economically more viable to pay workers for standing around than to pay them to build and scrap a car. So the excuse about jobs is another lie.
>Want to see for yourself? Do a quick search on Google Maps of Baltimore, Maryland, looking south of Broening Hwy in Dundalk, there you will see a massive expanse of space where many unsold cars are currently parked.
Which is evidence of what exactly? That cars exist that aren't sold? Surely that is no surprise.