The factory that only builds white Toyota Land Cruisers
topgear.com
topgear.com
[1] The so called 'emission computer' unit on the car is a simple pulse counter/comparator that activates a VSV on the carb to reduce backfire while descending downhill with the foot off the throttle.
[2] My brake booster is leaking a little bit, but at least it won't suddenly gives up on me while I'm riding, still looking for a replacement.
Overall cost of ownership is rough due to terrible MPG, but maintenance hasn't been an issue at all.
Point being, 200k and 25yr on an SUV isn't that impressive on something expensive enough in its day to mostly avoid being rode hard and put away wet from day one. There are a lot of pretty pristine 90s Jags kicking around too and they weren't exactly the pinnacle of reliability. Minivans, commuter compacts, station wagons, they got chewed up and spit out.
(of course for something critical such as brake booster I would only use OEM).
[1] I've had to do the PHH on a rusty-ish 80, not fun: https://youtu.be/WQabGr4KY5g?t=158
So unless your household (or your maintenance crew) is 100% electrified, your part of the problem.
https://www.pressherald.com/2022/03/31/our-sustainable-city-...
It’s basically the now is unacceptable, and the future is impossible.
But you're saying you're required to own an addition car?
If you get an early Civic or VW Bug, you're going to get pretty good mileage as long as the engine is well adjusted.
I ended up having to get a proper truck because I kept breaking suspension components in my Forester shrug.
And for all the climate sin folks, it’s to manage 90 acres of previously overgrown timberland which was a huge fire danger and would have gone up in smoke in short order otherwise.
It’s now happily sitting there sequestering far more carbon than the truck will ever release.
It does come with the territory though, and anyone owning an 80 (and probably a 100 series) at this point isn't doing it really to "save money" imo.
That being said, the recently outgoing 200 series LC didn't really do all that much better[1], and neither does the new 300 series.[2]
[1] https://www.fueleconomy.gov/feg/bymodel/2021_Toyota_Land_Cru...
I don't mean to judge and am genuinely curious -- I have a fairly fuel inefficient vehicle as well and it weighs on me sometimes that I maybe should try different, more climate friendly hobbies (like, stopping overlanding and pick up knitting or something...)
Same argument I have with aquaintainces that switch their cars to an electric ones... it's worse at the end if your previous car was in working order.
I've argued* that, because we drive our second car so little per year, that it makes more sense for us to buy an inexpensive, relatively gas-guzzling used car rather than a more economical hybrid. Reasoning being that someone is going to drive the gas guzzler and someone is going to drive that hybrid and better the hybrid go to someone driving a typical amount and we drive the worse one only 2-3K miles/year.
* - so far unsuccessfully, but the crazy used car market has made that moot for now.
They are also one of the few petrol vehicles that are still built to this kind of standard, so they do demonstrate as the “smoking gun” that the industry itself engineers obsolescence into their vehicles and could do much better.
Somehow we’ve all been reduced to yakking on and on about fuel economy. There are 30,000 parts in the average car, and almost all of them are manufactured and shipped. What’s the impact of tens of thousands of components and built onsite for JIT manufacturing?
If we wanted to change this, we could do very easily. We would just need to put a sticker in the window of the car that says: “Designed to Last: 12 years” or whatever. That way people could make an informed decision and game theory would come in to effect. Auto makers know this information: every car has a design life of you wouldn’t have anything like the “25 year design life” of a Land Cruiser in the first place.
I consider it the impact of car and oil company propaganda, as they’ve narrowed the discussion to “miles per gallon” rather than the overall impact of design life and the constant need to remanufacture the same vehicle over and over again for the same customer throughout their lifetime.
The hidden danger is in the subtle propaganda of suggested talking points from industry that subtly moves the conversation over decades. Propaganda isn’t to tell us what to think, it’s to frame and influence the things we talk about and give us a industry favorable set of opinion talking points to frame a conversation that benefits the status quo.
The Land Cruiser is one of the last petrol vehicles that demonstrates without a doubt that we could be building to a much higher standard for viritually the same money. It was 84k when it went off the market in 2020, and Toyotas next most expensive vehicle with half the service life was about 75k. The Land Cruiser has a 10,000 usd tax because it isn’t assembled in North America, so double the service life vehicle can be delivered at the same price as the top end vehicle in a lineup. Its simply a choice by car companies not to do it.
But all we as a society can talk about is gas mileage, because that’s something the “industry can get behind.”
It’s something to bear in mind.
This isn't really true. The manufacturing is intensive but not nearly as intensive as setting fire to 1/4 gallon of gas every mile.
This impact is also significantly lower for gas cars than electric, which achieve parity around 15,000 driven miles.
There is an obvious inherent trade-off of a longer service life: you don't get efficiency improvements for 25 years.
[edit] Studies show an average gas car produces about 5.6t of CO2e in manufacture, an electric car about 8.8t of CO2e. For the gasoline car that's equivalent to burning ~600 gallons of gasoline and for the electric, ~1000 gallons.
An average car is driven 12500mi per year, and look if you're getting 10mpg, that's 6 months. How about the other 24 years 6 months? Buying a car that's 10% more efficient breaks even after what, a couple of years? [1]
If you care about the environment, take a train. Caltrain gets 100 passenger-miles per gallon average on their diesel engines and those train cars are older than I am. Once they move to electric, it should be 250-ish pax-mi/gal-equivalent based on Bart. Although I suspect probably a lot more due to the longer runs between stations.
[1] https://www.epa.gov/automotive-trends/highlights-automotive-...
And that's before we account for any additional trips needed for personnel movements, car and track servicing, and other such things.
The Bart number may have been during peak only so fair point there, I can certainly look for the systemwide average. [1]
The Caltrain number is average over FY2016-2018, from their sustainability report page 5. [2] They completed roughly 436M passenger-miles per year, and consumed roughly 4.4M gallons of diesel. Clocks in around 100 passenger-miles per gallon. I'm sure its worse now with the COVID numbers. I think it's a fair ballpark point of comparison though, and you can consider the Bart number an upper limit.
You're of course right its a function of ridership. An average freight train gets over 400 miles per gallon per ton of cargo.
[1] https://www.bart.gov/sites/default/files/docs/GreenSheet.pdf
The official EPA rating on my 1995 is 12MPG city, and 14MPG highway. Real world, I'm more often in the 10-12 MPG range. If you add heavy offroad accessories, expect that to drop further.
The Diesel engine you can get in other parts of the world can get 20+ MPG in the same vehicle.
Economically wise, a 2 years old mid sized SUV here costs around 40000 USD, meanwhile I bought my FZJ80 with 6000 USD (with 200000 km on the ODO). Even if I drive 1000 km a month it will take me more than 30 years of driving to start losing money compare to buying a modern one.
We can praise those who organise their lives in such ways as to not be too much of a burden on the planet but I don’t believe it’s effective to shame those that don’t, or do it in different ways than you expect.
It is effective to put pressure on governments and industry though.
Get it fixed ASAP.
Now, could a master cylinder and a brake booster fail this way? I suppose if the brake booster was already failed and leaked vacuum at the booster/cylinder interface, and then the master cylinder seal at the main plunger also failed, that this could happen. But I don't see one causing the other.
Since then, any sign of a leak == park it and take the bus.
Other than that, the first spider I had was a wonderful thing. Plenty of performance, dynamic handling, looked gorgeous. The 2nd one was a complete sh*tbox because it was allowed to rust and never fixed properly or drove properly.
Chryslers have a bad reputation in Australia. Poor quality control, bad reliability (compared to Toyota), hard to get parts, interiors that eat themselves etc. I should know having owned a few (and rebuilding a 300C at the moment). Once they bought AMC all the terrible Chrysler problems seemed to be like a virus on Jeeps.
You can find owners listing their for sale here: https://forum.ih8mud.com/forums/bj74-vzj95-hzj75-kzj90.332/
(now, if only I can find the emission manual for the 1fz-f...)
This is coming from a Toyota fanboy (owned 2 Tacomas and now drive a Tundra).
There's a video going over the new and old designs (pinned to where the 4cyl part starts): https://youtu.be/ei5yC4IdDhs
Wouldn't be too surprised if they retire it next year.
4Runners still have the old 4.0L 1GR-FE, port-injected. (and a 5-speed automatic! you're right about low-change mentality)
Fuel economy is roughly similar (>= 11.0 L / 100 Km), as far as I know, as is power.
asking as i'm considering getting one from someone close to me, but recall it once getting 40-45mpg and now it seems stuck at 30mpg after ~180k miles.
In the EU, if you want a basic no thrills car, there's the Dacia (Oh no! ... anyway) brand which is basically older, tried and tested, Renault-Nissan group parts put in a budget yet attractive shell, built in Romania.
IIRC they're now the second best selling brand in the EU.
The exact same cars are being sold under either Renault or Nissan badges in different parts of the world.
There was also the Russian Lada Niva Taiga which was very popular here for those living in the mountainous countryside. Very basic and sturdy with almost no electronics at all. Not sure how the situation is now with the war and the sanctions.
But it was - and still is, can't believe they still make it - a _terrible_ car by any standard, and I can't really understand anyone buying one today. They are not cheap, have terrible design, terrible build quality, terrible fuel consumption, they are loud, and break easily - and they are not THAT good off-road ironically. If you want to put them somewhere on a map, they are about as bad as 70s British cars were.
But my slightly-conspiratorial view is also that companies want to engage in a kind of "customer indoctrination", where they want to train customers to expect and demand high-margin low-value features, so they can freely cut lower-margin sections of their product line. Sort of like the "starve the beast" approach, but for consumer preferences.
Of course, potential consumers could switch to a cheaper product from another manufacturer — in a sufficiently free market the unfulfilled demand for the low-margin option should be enough warrant a new entrant if the market is big enough.
TLDR if enough people wanted a simple car, someone would make it even if the existing companies don’t want to.
That makes sense to me. That's part of why the Model T was so cheap.
It's easy when you're Toyota and the overwhelming majority of your customers are middle class on up consumers.
When you're Nissan or Chrysler and you NEED to offer low MSRP stuff so your customers can just barely qualify for the loan or you're Ford and you NEED to offer base spec stuff for the fleet customers it's not so easy.
¯\_(ツ)_/¯
Meh. US culture was always a bit too simplistic, from homesteading the manifest destiny to "USSR has fallen, democracy won" and finally with "first black president elected, racism officially over guys", and now it seems society entered a post-modernist phase.
I mean the obvious fallacies[0] of these oversimplifications are getting the spotlight culturally. And it's mighty polarizing. One one hand it's too much for some people and on the other hand it's still nothing substantial for others.
[0] Yes, the USSR has fallen, but Putin built a cleptocracy, also here comes China. Oh, yes Obama got elected and the ACA is nice, but it hardly moved the needle for millions of people. The benefits of half a century of global and domestic changes concentrated in the top ~30%, and the drawbacks hit the bottom ~30%, and weaponized selfishness, shortsightedness, and radical demagoguery (ie. ingroup vs outgroup populism, both the eat-the-rich and the republiklan variety) are on the rise again, because social media maximizes engagement.
https://www.euroncap.com/en/vehicle-safety/the-ratings-expla...
https://www.euroncap.com/en/ratings-rewards/latest-safety-ra...
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Motor_vehicle_fatality_rate_in...
There is a definite bump in the last couple years (likely covid-related) but we are still at about 1/2 the rate of the 60s/70s/80s, and roughly 1/3 the rate per-mile driven. Even by total deaths, fewer people died last year than in most every year of the 1960s. The increasing safety standards of the modern road system (cars and infrastructure) should be applauded as an engineered success story.
Roughly two or times as many people die each year of alcohol abuse. If we are going after dangerous evils there are better areas to attack.
> If we are going after dangerous evils there are better areas to attack.
Absolutely, but ... I'm not saying "it's all connected" and all of it is due to suburban sprawl, but ... it's a common factor.
If people were not driving, drinking, vaping, fentanyling in their little isolation cubes (ah, I mean cars, or houses with perfectly useless backyards, or tents), they might die less. Low population density does nasty things to communities. NIMBYs keep density low, commute times high, etc.
[1] usually "bigger car wins"
I am going to be very sad when I find I can no longer buy a car without bullshit like parking sensors, auto braking, digital screens, tracking/logging and so on.I think the way auto makers have 'trained' their customers is by removing the granularity of customization. Back in the day, every possible option could be tweaked when you ordered a new car. I knew a family that ordered their van with (standard) upholstery seats in the front, but cheaper vinyl seats in the back (because small kids with drinks).
You can't cherry pick features now, you just get 3 or 4 trim packages: base / standard / luxury / luxury + sport. And base is so punishingly sparse it only exists to lower the 'starting at' price in ads.
And that level of indoctrination is nothing compared to the 60 years long campaign to keep most urban development zoned as car-centric sprawl.
Even car enthusiasts, who talk endlessly about how simple cars are better, will point out how poor of a deal a new "basic" car is compared to a used luxury car. Jalopnik and the like used to constantly run articles like, "Why buy a new Honda Civic when you can get this 2012 Infiniti G35 for the same price?!!?" Sometimes they were tongue-in-cheek, featuring something like an Maserati, but most of the time, it was genuine advice.
It's totally possible to sell cheap, basic cars in the USA and make a profit, but the key is that those cars need to sell. Companies have tried for years to make the formula work. The Versa, Mirage, Fiesta, and Fit were all basic, no frills transportation, but the only one left is the Versa.
I think it's hypocritical of people who don't own one of those (preferably that they bought new) to complain about lack of basic cars in the USA. If you weren't willing to make the sacrifices necessary to drive a basic car, why should you complain about other people not making the same sacrifice?
> But my slightly-conspiratorial view is also that companies want to engage in a kind of "customer indoctrination",
Or...Vehicles exist at a high enough price point that price/performance is a key driver of value. Spending more on a larger, more capable vehicle makes sense if you plan to use it for the next 15 years. Transaction costs on cars are insane. So if one buy small, then trade up as one needs, then it's going to be much more expensive in the long run than just going big the first time.
Barring pickup trucks, the best selling vehicles in the USA are all pretty much mid-level, family-focused transportation: Rav4, CRV, Rogue, Camry. These are big enough to haul a family, but not loaded to the gills with luxury appointments.
Mostly, I'd like to buy a basic car, but in the US, you've mostly got to buy off the lot, and basic cars aren't well stocked; maybe they don't sell as fast so dealers don't stock them, maybe they don't make as much margin so dealers don't stock them, either way, they're not there so you can't buy them. You might be able to convince a dealer to order it, but then you're usually not going to get any of the promotions, and it's not worth waiting 2-3 months and paying more so you don't have to get the features you don't want.
I remember shaking my head in disagreement the last time I saw you bring this up in the thread about the hypothetical "Costco car" <https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=28569886>.
I don't own any of the cars you mention and don't care to. I also, however, don't care to own a luxury brand, or even some mid-level with fully loaded options, or even what you would probably consider to be a reasonably priced modest choice, e.g. Toyota Corolla, for that matter. Why? Because when I think of "great, small, cheap cars", I don't think any of those fit the bill. All the aforementioned cars (including your recommendations) all share one or more qualities with luxury buys that disqualify them from being considered by my rubric as "basic cars". Bezos famously drove a beater. At some point he upgraded to a newer (but still old) Honda Accord that I would probably classify similarly—not basic enough.
I own (and for years drove) a mid-90s Mustang. (Still owned, but no longer driven.) It is/was a great economy car, which crucially by my rubric includes low-cost maintenance, given that it lends itself to easy repair. Still it came with some things outside the bare essentials, including AC, power locks, power windows, a nice stereo, and zero smart features (another pro in my book, not a con). Having never bought and owned one of the cars you recommend, where do I stand, in your book, on being able to complain about the state of access to basic and affordable cars in the US car market?
> Or...Vehicles exist at a high enough price point that price/performance is a key driver of value. Spending more on a larger, more capable vehicle makes sense if you plan to use it for the next 15 years.
Alternatively: we know that people are not rational actors, and car ownership is just one of the many things that people can be observed to be incredibly irrational about (to the point of acting counter to their best interests and/or their own stated interests).
Ah, I'm curious what new car you consider to be "basic". I'm guessing none of them are. Whatever "beater" Bezos drove, probably has a modern analog, and that modern analog is probably the same price or cheaper, adjusted for inflation; safer; and more reliable.
Simple does not mean reliable, and reliability does not require simplicity. First-gen Lexus LS400s are still rolling around after 30 years, despite being a flagship vehicle that was loaded with enough technology to compete with top end Mercedes. Meanwhile, a Trabant is as simple as cars get, but keeping one going is quite the challenge, even though pretty much every part on one can be built by a local specialist, or adapted from another vehicle.
You'll get 250k miles and 20 years out of a new Corolla. And if the car has a fundamental defect that prevents that from happening, they'll make it right with an out of warranty repair. See: Taco drivers who received new chassis or cars with the 2AZ-FE who received complete engine rebuilds under warranty, even on vehicles with well over 100k miles. After that, because Toyota sold millions of them each generation (and shared parts with millions of other cars), you can easily find a lifetime supply of replacement parts. And that's what you like about your Mustang, right?
> Alternatively: we know that people are not rational actors, and car ownership is just one of the many things that people can be observed to be incredibly irrational about (to the point of acting counter to their best interests and/or their own stated interests).
Two of my siblings bought the basic transportation people are espousing here: one an older Civic, the other a Mazda2. Neither owned those cars for more than 18 months because, like many 20-somethings, "oopsies" happened and they find out things like, car seats don't fit if the person in the front seat is over 5'6, or strollers are gigantic. Both ended up trading their cars in for a minivan and a crossover. Both took a bath on the trades too.
This was irrational behavior. They were buying the car they could live with now with the expectation of keeping it for 15 years. A rational person would consider what life looks like in 15 years if they were planning on keeping a car that long.
I've driven both. I'll take the Mustang on that alone, even though gas mileage is better in the Corolla.
Naturally, I've done maintenance and repairs on a Mustang from the mid-90s. I'm guessing you haven't. I've only done minimal repairs on a new Corolla. The Corolla loses there, too.
Strike 3 really is the price. Given all this, you'd think the one with these downsides would be cheaper or something. Otherwise, you're putting one car up against a less desirable one, except it also costs more money? Would you pay extra for the privilege of having a bird shit on you while you walk down the street—where not paying means trudging through your day shitless? The choice is simple.
With lots of things in life, you expect there to be some sort of tradeoff involved. With food, for example, maybe something tastes great but it's bad for you, or vice versa. It doesn't always work like that, though.
New cars are like chicken-fried steak in a competition with salad: no pros, all cons. I hate chicken fried steak, and if you hate chicken-fried steak, too, but your view of the world is one where tradeoffs are axiomatic and inescapable, then the natural outcome is to find yourself probably on the cusp of thinking that you should, like, eat more chicken-fried steak, even though you don't like it—or more precisely: because you don't like it. But that's crazy, and you shouldn't! Something can both taste bad and be bad for you while other things (like a salad) can be better for you and be delicious. It turns out there's actually lots of stuff like this, and the car market in 2022 is one of them.
Barring any changes (like Bezos taking a personal interest in fixing this problem and making the hypothetical Costco car a real thing), fuck the whole industry.
> I'm curious what new car you consider to be "basic". I'm guessing none
Right.
"“You know, carmakers always say they build what people want. But they never mention the fact that they spend billions to tell them what they want. It wasn’t just that consumers spontaneously desired a truck that was as big as a house. No, that was a gradual process. And it has been pushed by the automakers primarily because bigger equals more profit.”"
https://www.marketplace.org/2018/04/26/business/ford-motor-c...
My only complaints are the horrendous fuel efficiency and the windshield, which is prone to nicks due to its almost straight vertical position and is comparatively expensive to replace due to its abnormal size and the steps to remove/install it being rather involved. Beyond getting that windshield replaced twice, I haven't had to do anything besides general oil, tire, and light changes. It's seen better days with some paint chipping, but with more than 200,000 miles over 15 years, it's still going strong. I'm hopeful that I'll get to stick with it for the foreseeable future.
https://www.carscoops.com/2022/10/toyota-ending-production-o...
Everything old is either summer show cars that never see salt, or rust buckets barely holding together. I definitely see the appeal of simple cars though.
There is a near-infinite number of basic cars rotting away on dealer lots.
People don't want them. They want compact SUVs with 47 cameras and adaptive cruise control.
https://www.topgear.com/car-news/classic/you-could-own-forme...
But I guess in comparison to other traditional martial colors? But show that photo to a person on the street and ask what color it is... you're unlikely to get "pink" in response.
https://africatimes.com/2017/03/30/msf-mali-report-perilous-...
If it would, then we likely would see more of it ...
Right now dealer 'used' 78 series with 300kms on the clock are around 120k, or you can buy a 20 year old one for just under half of that!
* body-on-frame construction
* reliable and proven engine platform (naturally aspirated v6)
* 5 speed auto transmission (modern trannys have like 10 gears bc of emissions)
* no fancy hybrid / turbo drivetrain that will start breaking after 3 years
* big after market so you can customize to your liking (got a bunch of off road toys on mine)
Cons:
* expensive (though you will save on maintenance and repair costs in the long run)
* there is a big demand for these trucks so you might need to stomach a $5K dealer mark up
* gas hog
* drives like farm equipment compared to a tesla, not refined at all
* infotainment is about as modern as the rest of the car
Next generation, it will probably go the hybrid / turbo route like the tundra.
I'm with you though, 2x4 is a gross frankencar combo.
When I lived in Africa, everyone drove a Land Rover (don't remember the model name, though). Damn uncomfortable ride, but you could go anywhere. I think it was also possible to completely dismantle the car, by hand, so it could be portaged around.
Portaging was not done lightly, as the effort was considerable, and the vast logistical tail to accomplish it had to hoof it back on their own with the exception of the handful or fewer who could ride onwards on the re-assembled and fueled up Land Rover. Carrying the fuel and bare minimum consumables for the round-trip logistical train (assuming foraging on the go was even an option) I imagine was almost as much of a burden as the vehicle itself.
Toyota does seem to have taken over this niche though, as Land Rover doesn't seem too interested any longer in the market these days.
Was impressed just how much the car went through and how it was still operational. Super interesting read if you have some time to spare.
https://expeditionportal.com/forum/threads/democratic-republ...
I had no idea, amazing. Old school, long-lasting, reliable. Is there a car for us "normies" that is like this? Being a swede, I would say the Volvo 240.
Alternately, you could look around for an old Unimog -- I'm still dreaming of one. If you're in the US, you can often find an LMTV for sale: a fair amount of people refit them for overlanding or vanlife. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Family_of_Medium_Tactical_Vehi.... I don't think those are very computerized.
Why do EV's need lots of electronics? the only required controls I can think of are: - Charge control, - Power control - accelerator and regen breaking - Whatever driver assist is legally required
You don't need phone home telemetry, glass dashboard controls, dodgy auto pilot or many other luxury "needs"
I would think that an EV could be even simpler than a ICE vehicle as there is no need for all the complex engine management required to keep fuel consumption down.
Matt white is the most popular color for governments and businesses because it's the cheapest to buy and the cheapest/easiest to fix by yourself when scuffed (I fixed mine with a 2 Euro tippex like marker from Amazon).
Metallic/perlescent paints are far pricier for buying and are a nightmare to maintain and fix when scuffed.
In Europe, the white van is the workhorse of every business.
Agree w/ GP re: touchup, "white van man" aka contrators.
But that gets obscured because we already HAVE the high-emissions society with all the parts and pieces and knowhow.
After all, a vehicle that fails in the middle of nowhere may never be towed back and fixed unless it's like this one - fixable with very little.
But in Los Angeles? That's an entire different issue, especially as there will be so many that economies of scale come into play.
https://www.iea.org/data-and-statistics/charts/comparative-l...
But in practice, of course the old ones are worse at efficieny, too.
> fuel consumption of 29.7 mpg US - 35.7 mpg UK - 7.9 L/100km, a weight of 7187 lbs (3260 kg)
https://specs.cars-directory.net/toyota/land_cruiser/4.2_VX-...
This was a reply to bombcar.
The issues were more around safety (both passenger and pedestrian) and not being able to sell it in many countries because it can't have an airbag fitted (I think there was an ergonomics reason it wasn't possible).
All the electronics and gimmicks to lower immediate emissions at the cost of reliability.
My car, for instance, turns off the engine when stopped, that can't be good for the engine and battery.
If saves a bit of gas but I am sure I'll have to change my battery sooner, not to mention the wear and tear on other components.
Oil is viscous. It takes time for it to flow down.
As someone who frequents very warm countries, I think most people do it because of the AC. If the engine is not on, the AC won't adjust the temperature that you've selected.
Saves fuel but wears out the battery and starter motor much faster.
Starting the engine is a stressful experience if you're used to vehicles where sometimes the engine won't start. Especially if you're at the front of a queue of traffic.
I understand the intuition behind this, but one could also see a place where starting the engine while it's still hot is better than idling (less wear, fewer opportunities for deposits to build up from wasted combustion), and where the impact to the battery is minimal as the hot engine makes it easier to turn over for the very few cycles it takes to get it going again.
It's largely irrelevant.
More than half of the wear and tear in an engine happens during cold starts. Unless you're in utter gridlock, you won't experience them more often than when at the start of the trip.
Toyota's hybrids turn the engine off and on on a regular basis, even during cruising, and have a proven track record of reliability.
Sometimes my car loads my wife's profile when I drive which changes it back to standard driving. It is jarring having the car just always want to roll forward. It just feels so much worse than single pedal driving.
Is disabling this "creep" independently of braking with the gas pedal an option in any electric vehicles? I seem to remember that some cars with continuously variable transmissions had this as an option.
It is still not quite the same experience though, as the ICE will just keep rolling at low speeds forever without actually ever coming to a stop until you press the brake. Auto hold will only engage when the vehicle actually stops. For my EV, when I get off the accelerator pedal it'll come to a complete stop on its own and then hold itself there.
Other than turning on my EV, most trips don't involve me touching the brake pedal at all.
I don't know anyone with a stop/start engine that has ever complained to me about having to replace their battery sooner. Personally, I drive clunkers, and have never had to replace a battery on one of those, despite me turning off the engine whenever I can. I think modern batteries are pretty damn hardy.
What kills batteries is deep discharge cycles. Sipping a bit of juice to start an engine and replacing it quickly does almost nothing to reduce its lifespan.
A friendly reminder to everyone on the internet that your instinct and "gut feeling" isn't worth all that much. It's trivial to find out stats on this, and they prove that the inclusion of Start&Stop systems in cars had zero impact on reliability since their introduction over 10 years ago. But I still see people on forums saying "this can't be good for the engine!".