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Comment by cwyers | Hacker News Reader

> All my cars are older and will forever be. No TV screen on the dash to go bad, no integrated CAN bus making diagnostics and repair a nightmare, no fly by wire nonsense. No phone-home spyware or OTA update horrors. If a relay goes bad it's a physical relay I can swap, easy. And so on, everything is fixable.

Fuel efficiency is worse in older cars:

https://www.bts.gov/content/average-fuel-efficiency-us-light...

So are emissions:

https://www.epa.gov/automotive-trends/highlights-automotive-...

Safety standards, too. All of those things are quality benefits for the median consumer (who doesn't even know what a CAN bus is).

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> Fuel efficiency is worse in older cars

But the emissions footprint in producing the new, fuel efficient car to replace your old one is quite staggering

I agree, and you absolutely shouldn't replace a car on the basis of fuel economy savings alone. (Having said that, most people aren't junking their old cars if they have a useful service life left, they're reselling them into the used car market.)

But if you compare a new 1998 car to a new 2018 car of the same class, the 2018 car is absolutely going to be better on fuel efficiency and emissions than the 1998 car. And it's not like they got better at fuel efficiency and worse at user maintainability for entirely unrelated reasons; sticking little computers and sensors in things like the fuel injection system is why they're more fuel efficient/better at emissions. (Yes, the little dashboard display is not saving you anything on fuel, it's not 100% related, but they're not fully orthogonal issues either.

Sure, emissions are undeniably better (unless you have a VW, haha) but this is only a net gain if the car gets scrapped, not sold into the used market like you say most people do - that way we have the old smoker still driving around, plus the new one and all its manufacturing costs. The only real gain is for the new car buyers psychologically - they get to feel like they're doing their part, buying their way to a greener planet.

Some number of cars are always going to need to be made new in a year -- due to collisions, wear and tear, etc. It is better for everybody, ceterus parabus, if newer cars are better at fuel efficiency and emissions. It is possible that the number of new cars is higher than it needs to be, but I am unaware of any evidence that suggests it is. Regardless, for each marginal car bought, it's better if that car is more fuel-efficient.

This is the root of the problem. We need to reduce car dependency.

> Sure, emissions are undeniably better (unless you have a VW, haha)

I have a 1985 VW van, so it's haha the wrong direction for me.

It also depends on how much you’re driving. If you average say 5k miles per year it’s likely selling your older car is worse for the environment as someone else is likely to drive more. On the other hand people driving 30k miles per year should really be in a very efficient vehicle.

Exactly, rather than getting two new car, I just drive the wifes old less fuel efficient car for those days when I need to go to the office, 15km away. She then got a new more efficient car as she drives 100km per day.

Cars are insanely expensive here, and at 150.000km the car isn’t really in need of replacement. Doing so would also be more environmentally damaging, compared to driving it less than a 100km per week.

For anyone looking to research that, this[1] video aggregated some source studies. tl;dw: estimates are between 2-17 metric tons of CO2 emissions to produce a new car (SUVs are more). And during operation an average car emits 5.2 metric tons of CO2 per yer.

For a concrete example, a 2021 Toyota Camry Hybrid at 52mpg emits 170g/mile of CO2[2]. A 2000 Camry 4cl at 24mpg emits 340g/mile[3]. Assuming you drive an average 13,500 miles/year[4] the break-even point for CO2 is about 4.5 years.

If you have the 2000 V6 Camry at 20mpg then the break-even is closer to 2.5 years.

[1] https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=6RhtiPefVzM [2] https://www.fueleconomy.gov/feg/Find.do?action=sbs&id=43307 [3] https://www.fueleconomy.gov/feg/Find.do?action=sbs&id=15965 [4] https://www.caranddriver.com/research/a32880477/average-mile...

Not just the cars ... maintaining the economy that creates those jobs that make new new stuff, and let people pay those new prices ... while wasting the old, and paying/maintaining someone expert enough to keep them running.

Also fixing, improving: you gain that knowledge for yourself and share it with others. Instead of remaining a one-trick-pony. How many people even know how to change an oil filter? Hell you may wind up paying someone to change your battery. How crazy is that? Winding up tightly dependent.

Why not pay someone else to change the battery? The guy in the AAA truck who replaced mine also diagnosed it was bad in the first place, brought the new one, and took the old one away. I wasn't going to do any of that stuff.

> Why not pay someone else to change the battery?

You can of course always pay for service if you don't feel like doing it.

But that's missing the point. With older cars you have a choice of DIY or pay someone.

With newer BMWs or example, even something as trivial as changing the battery requires dealer intervention because the ECU is coded to the battery (for no reason whatsoever, other than proprietary lock-in).

Today, there are still independent BMW-certified mechanics who have access to the proprietary tooling to do these operations so if you make friends with one, you can still change a battery yourself. But nothing prevents BMW from cutting them off someday and then you're truly stuck with a dependency on the dealer. And what happens when BMW decides your model is no longer supported because they want you to buy a new one?

No thanks. I'll have older cars which can be fixed mechanically without any DRM nonsense.

Ok, but BMW is particularly bad about it. Like, they are famous for this vendor lock in bullshit. I've had a brand new Mercedes AMG, 2016 model and did pretty much all maintenance by myself. Changing brake pads, oil, and yes, replacing the battery last year - no problems at all, could just do it myself. It definitely felt like a car that could be worked on by anybody without the electronics getting in the way or throwing an error just because you disconnected something for 2 minutes.

> Today, there are still independent BMW-certified mechanics who have access to the proprietary tooling to do these operations so if you make friends with one, you can still change a battery yourself.

Are we talking about secondhand owners? People who buy BMWs don't have friends.

In that case I feel for them, but at least there's plenty of other (generally cheaper and more reliable) brands.

Yeah, but on the other hand... http://www.bbc.com/autos/story/20160809-your-car-is-not-your...

> Fuel efficiency is worse in older cars

On fleet-wide average, for sure. But not for all cars.

One of my cars (daily commuter pre-pandemic) is a late 80s Honda CRX, it gets nearly 40 MPG. Even in 2021 many (probably most) cars can't match that kind of efficiency.

(Energy cost per mile is lower than for my partner's electric Fiat 500e!)

The car that makes me sad and almost angry is the original CRX HF (mine is not an HF). This is a car that got over 50MPG with mid-80s engine technology!

https://jalopnik.com/1986-honda-crx-hf-393147

If Honda had continued developing the HF engine, what kind of mileage could an evolved 2021 CRX HF be getting today? We'll never know, but I'd guess over 70MPG.

Yes! I owned a Honda Civic 1996 with VTEC petrol engine and it had the same fuel efficiency as my current Prius.

Honda has done some amazing things with engine design, and they are catching up to Toyota in terms of reliability as well. 2018 Honda Accord - 4 door sedan - I4 has 45 mpg in real world driving. https://www.truedelta.com/Honda-Accord/mpg-108

There were a lot more smaller car models in the 80s-90s which makes a difference. It also helps that older cars are less likely to be 4WD/AWG. Finally, a MT will be more efficient than a torque-converter automatic with the same number of speeds.

As a ranty aside: You are not safer in an older car because they usually have lousy side-impact ratings. Also, the cyber-security issues of newer cars are overstated. While new cars have many computers, outside of what's in the head unit these aren't general purpose computers, but rather are running code bare-meta, don't communicate on anything other than a can bus or i2c and follow a decentralized architecture. Car manufacturers are extremely conservative in their designs. There have been documented issues like the Jeep Cherokee head unit being able to send arbitrary messages over CAN via the head unit cellular link but but all current car models have telematics.

There’s more to life than fuel economy and emissions. One trip of a bulk freighter carrying wood chips to be made into toilet paper produces more emissions than hundreds of thousands of people driving their cars all year long. If you decide that you want increased fuel economy and better emissions, well that’s your choice. As for me I will purchase things I don’t have to throw away. New cars are actually pretty shitty compared to ones from a couple decades ago, this is common knowledge among auto enthusiasts.

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