Americans Are Keeping Their Cars Longer, as Vehicle Age Hits 12 Years

how long you keep a car is your decision. if you like it, and you're willing to pay for regular maintenance, then keep it. this "long run" comparison of owning and repairing versus buying a new car is just silly. So many people have the incentive to get you to buy a new car, but practically no one has an incentive to tell you to take good care of the things you own so they last.

And new cars arent always better. That nice collision avoidance/lane keeper and camera system? that was implemented as a countermeasure for increasing A and B pillar size after regulatory agencies decided too many americans were getting crushed to death in roll-over accidents. collision avoidance was literally the only way auto manufacturers could keep you out of a manslaughter charge thanks to the absolute byzantine nightmare of info-tainment systems that also do things like climate control.

controversial opinion here but older cars teach you a healthy fear of operating a 2000lb rolling death machine. no infofainment means they are safer for the driver, and no nanny-state A pillars mean you arent doing 80 in a 65 quite as often.

I own a 2000 mercury grand marquis. its a v8 so it inspires me to bipedal transportation pretty often with its fuel enconomy. the biggest problem I have with the car is my coworkers nicknaming me "the don" for driving a murdered-out land yacht but its what i like.

I don't need the absolute latest and greatest computer safety features. Some of them sound nice but if it has side+passenger airbags and seatbelts then that is good enough for me.

On the flip side, one of my family members gets a new car every year through some kind of special leasing program. Not only does that seem wasteful from a number of angles but how do you not get attached to a car you love driving? Once I find a car I like then I don't want to give it up unless maintenance becomes prohibitively expensive and even then it can be tough.

https://www.consumerreports.org/buying-a-car/people-spending...

Well…sort of. As the article details, there’s a lot at the top of the market that skews that average upwards. But even then, I don’t think you can get into a Honda Civic for less than $20,000. And good luck buying an F-150.

But also it’s remarkable how long cars last now. A 2010 car is still probably in fantastic shape. (My parents’ Camry sure is.) And while the new safety features are very useful (c’mon, dad, buy the new car, you need that blind spot warning), if the car ain’t broke, why replace it?

It was still going pretty strong but vehicle tech advances rather quickly these days that after about a decade there is really a sizable improvement in safety.

I agree with the safety concerns others have mentioned about older cars, and I would gladly pay more for safety. But I do feel a bit frustrated when getting the safety also requires a huge TCO increase for frivolous features. (E.g., are the automatic windshield wipers really worth the 4x cost bump at the glass shop?)

Getting a rental for a few days just to double check that I was right. Rental market sucks right now because they dumped inventory and demand has gone up, but still better to throw away $400 so I can be sure.

I'm not a car expert, but I'm guessing the dearth of driving in the past year has also affected this. Anecdotal, but I've put barely any miles on my 2013 car in well over a year, which I see as extending its life. I'm noticing my dealership has really amped up their direct-mail pleas to "come in for service," suggesting this revenue stream has dried up as cars stay in driveways.

Then I read the March 1973 "Bicycle" issue of Scientific American, which measured efficiency in terms of Kilograms/Kilometers/KCalories. Back then bikes were about 28x more efficient than cars. Steve Jobs referred to that article when he declared computers to be a "bicycle for the mind". As for me: I dropped cars and bought a bike.

We need to kill this before it ever manages to take hold.

"They don't make them like they used to!" - does anyone remember hearing this?

I'm surprised that no one has commented that 12 year is the AVERAGE. The population likely follows a long tail distribution. I'd love to have access to the dataset.

Some other implications:

The market for some cars has eaten it's own tail, and this is likely to be a progressive phenomenon - Sedans and small cars are still on the road in large numbers even as manufacturers reduce production on these models. If a manufacturer cannot sell a new car at a high enough price point, it does not make sense to stay in that business. This drives up the average price for new cars, as the market for lower cost cars has moved to primarily used cars.

Manufacturers make money on used cars in a few ways - repair parts and service is the biggest. I don't have access to privileged information about this, but I can only imagine that as EVs roll out Monthly Recurring Revenue will only become more important.

As plastics age and go through heat/cool cycles the get brittle and easily fail. It’s infuriating to have to dismantle half the engine just to replace a $5 coolant elbow because GM decided to use a plastic one instead of metal.

Frankly I'm waiting for EVs to become realistically available because right now they aren't practically priced. The range, eg of a tesla, is not an issue.

I'm happy with the future idea of three vehicles. Right now I have a little hatchback and a old truck for trailers and knocking about with heavy equipment. I'd appreciate a daily commute thing that is fully electric. By that time, the hatchback will have likely failed.

Maybe we will get to a point where vehicle lifespans can outlast a typical human as we transition to EVs which have less moving parts and lubricants than ICEs.

My 2013 car has 35,000 miles on it. Beautiful car (Hyundai Genesis sedan). 8 airbags.

But it lacks a rear-view camera and doesn't have the modern stuff like collision avoidance that pretty much comes standard nowadays.

But another reason I'm holding off on buying a new car is that I sense a huge shift in car technology coming up, and I don't want to buy in a transitional period. When I looked around a year ago, the electric range was 60-90 for used electric cars, as much as 250+ for recent (but expensive) models. Self driving and navigating features may also be on the way. It seems that range is expanding rapidly and new capabilities for self-navigation are closer to being mainstream, while prices are likely to drop substantially for better range.

I guess I just don't want to buy a new DVD player just before they go obsolete. I kind of doubt my experience or motivation is the norm. But if it is so, this may a one time temporary delay as people are reluctant to buy during a one-time huge transition in the market (though alternatively, cars could become more like computers and cell phones, with such rapid technical progress that it becomes the norm to trade in or up frequently).

I hope to keep my electric car for at least 10 years

Less social pressure to get new car as harder to tell what’s new. Obviously not impossible but not as stark as a 1990 from a 2000 car. 2010 and 2020 car don’t look that much different.

I consider it part of my entertainment budget, and while I don’t love eating the depreciation I’ve done fairly well over the years picking cars which have held their value (generally due to their niche appeal).

This wasn’t really the case with late 80’s and early 90’s cars in the late and mid 2000’s…

Aircon, airbags, ABS, power steering and heck even decent multimedia features all became quite standard pretty darn fast.

Other than the lack large LCD screens in the dashboard you can’t really tell if a car is from 2008 or 2018 even the shape is nearly the same because the same design language is used and we have optimized the form as much as possible from a fuel consumption perspective.

However it was a car designed and built in the days when cars were still largely analog. No infotainment, no fancy technological wizardry governing the power delivery or handling.

Nowadays many cars have gizmos and gadgets up the wazoo. Even if the base mechanical bits continue to work, wouldn't a lot of the fancy features become akin to Stone Age technology? That infotainment system that is awesome in 2021 isn't going to be so hot in 2026 let alone 2031.

These days, 260hp isn’t much of anything special, but back then it was the most powerful car I’d ever bought, and I still love the whine of the air, increasing in frequency, as I pull onto an empty freeway and put my foot down to get up to speed.

Over the years it’s needed a small amount of maintenance - new tires, timing belts etc. But nothing has gone wrong that isn’t expected to happen on the maintenance schedule. That reliability and the fact that it’s been paid for, for over a decade now, is just awesome.

Airbags everywhere, excellent brakes, not much rear visibility (but it’s a convertible, so the top is down more often than not), traction control, and a 6-cd changer [grin], what’s not to like :)

Having said all that, in a few years it’ll be time to move to an electric car, but I want to stave off that future as long as possible.

Cars are a money sink. They depreciate majorly in value really fast. There is no way I’m going to invest in a good/luxury car unless I have a very specific reason to do so.

In places where cars have mandated regular checkups, it's also something that comes with zero risk to people running cars that have safety or environmental issues. This (If I understand correctly) is only the case in a few states in the US though.

Honestly, they might be come infeasible from a software perspective far before they do from a mechanical perspective.

Also, are ppl on average driving less? More delivery to home presumably means less errsnds to run? Less driving means a car lasts longer.

Car prices have risen quite a bit in the last few years.

https://www.reddit.com/r/DIY/comments/zbxa6/resurrection_198...

This can be chalked up to another feature of capitalism: planned robustness.

Although I support capitalism to a large degree, this "consumerist alarm" is patently hilarious. The PE firms reading this are probably scurrying to find new ways to "engineer" cars to fail sooner and jack up the price of maintenance and spare parts. I'll wait for the spare parts "shortage" analogous to the lumber "shortage" which in reality was caused by PE firms who own large swaths of harvestable forests just deciding to not log as quickly...

We own all our vehicles so maintenance, insurance, and fuel are the only real costs of ownership.

Since I have lots of tools accumulated and skills learned over more than 40 years of driving I do a lot of my own maintenance and upgrades.

All but one of our vehicles has more than 230k miles on the odometer. The exception has 110k miles and is 6 years old. The other vehicles range in age from 10 years old to 46 years old. We bought 4 of these vehicles new, of the other two one was a gift and the other I bought at auction for a pittance.

I prefer older vehicles without all the safety stuff, electronics, etc. They are simple to work on and maintain and will last a long time without having to be molly-coddled. I do appreciate the skills needed by the new vehicle designers to fit all that crap under the hood, inside the dash, etc. and make it all work. The drawback is that this does make some maintenance work a lot more difficult than it should be as things have to be moved out of the way to fix relatively simple problems.

I don't see airbags and things like that as necessary features. I only have 3 vehicles that came with them and all 3 have had bags recalled.

As long as I have space to store the vehicles and the option to start and stop insurance coverage (shift from daily driver to stored vehicle) with 24 hours notice I will likely keep all of them since we own them.

I have a hard time getting excited about spending $30k or more for a vehicle that will monitor everything I do, how I choose to do it, where I go, etc. You will never own that vehicle like I own mine.

I am not one of those redneck dipshits who disables emission controls, lifts the body and buys larger tires. I use OEM parts for everything when they are available, aftermarket parts if they aren't. All my vehicles except one are or could be daily drivers for anyone. My wife and my kids drive them so they have to work right and be safe with no mechanical issues that could leave them in a bind.

Over the years I have had to upgrade my maintenance skills to be able to troubleshoot electronics, sensors, etc. That is probably the one thing that I appreciate most about newer vehicles, that I have been forced to learn new things and to buy new tools. Who doesn't like new tools?

I have also learned a lot about several manufacturers and the corners they cut or the extra steps they take to improve the ownership experience.

Cars are pretty great. Trucks are pretty greater.

I am excited to finally see wide adoption of electric vehicles. It can't come soon enough. I think Musk might have said that part of the reason he started building cars was to try to drive the old guard companies into a shift to electrics. With Ford, GM, Toyota, Honda, etc getting on board I think he has satisfied that goal and we will all benefit.

As someone who worked 40 years in the oil and gas business I just want to see all that ended. Regulate it out of existence or do as investment houses are doing and just cut off funding for new exploration.

Where would that leave all my older vehicles? Well, I would have great platforms for conversion to electrics or I could scrap them and let their materials become something else useful. Like the rocks, everything changes with time.

Consumer behavior has been very different in the last 18 months.

Not that I don't think quality improvements over he last two to three decades wont have an impact