Death trap? Ha. Nice labeling there. And I didn't say that driving my rig was a virtue. I said I drive it because the US lacks vehicles that match the simplicity of the 70 series Land Cruisers in TFA, and this is as about as close as one can get these days.
A comparable modern SUV (2022 Suburban) gets 21 city/27 highway, pretty close to double the mileage you get.
> It met the safety standards in place when it was new
The class was made and marketed to evade passenger auto safety and CAFE standards, and the government hadn’t closed the gaps it exploited yet in 1988, so that means nothing.
Interesting, though, is how hard this drops off. I once did a 280 drive at 3 AM that I ran at between 90 mph and 100 mph almost throughout. And the dash readout was 19 mpg (oof!).
Is there an OBD tool with GPS I can use to track this stuff? I really like it.
My personal empty tank to empty tank mileage is 21.5 km/l (50 mpg) in the city streets of Madras, India in an ancient Maruti 800! The top speed that thing could hit was 68 mpg (which I only ever approached once and never in the city).
Using this for comparison: https://www.fueleconomy.gov/feg/bymodel/2018_Subaru_Forester...
Now find a real life 2022 Suburban owner that actually gets anywhere near that lab tested mileage. So while I am sure it get better than 12-14, probably closer to 18 in reality but they do that with smaller engines and tubro's which anyone that has any knowledge of mechanical wear will tell you a turbo (or any boosted) engine will wear out ALOT faster than a naturally aspirated engine.
It is unlikely a 2022 Suburban;s engine will be running at all in 30 years. hell I would bet it will implode before 15 years
Sure, EPA ratings are inflated but you probably get close to 1 mpg over the combined EPA mileage rating of the most efficient version of the 1988 Suburban (and 50% more than your claim before you inflated it once conparative numbers were introduced) in yours. Right...
> they do that with smaller engines and tubro's
A naturally aspirated 5.3L, no turbos. Its true that one of the 1988s had a 6.2L, but...
That said I did go look up the Specs for a 2022, and I have no idea where you got 21/27mpg anyway, the best Chevy lists is 20 Highway with the 6.2L which drops to 14mpg in city because the Active Fuel Management does nothing for city driving
Then their is a 5.3L which most suburbans will be outfitted with, which is 15/19 MPG, which as you already conceded is inflated so a real person will likely see 13-14 City and 17-18 Highway in real world, and after 10 years I of ownership I would expect that to drop of to around where the Grand parent claims their 30 year old suburban is at anyway
While the wrenching crowd still has some time, I do wonder how long gas vehicles will be a viable option. A gas station near me just got razed, my wife has an EV, and at some point it won't be profitable to maintain all the gas stations we have.
Many many decades, they are not going away anytime soon
In metro's, or states / cities with net population loss I can see where service businesses of all type including gas stations would start ceasing operations as profitability drops
In my area not only are new stations being built many of them are putting in Fast Chargers for BEV's so the idea that the filling station model will just go under is premature as well, they will adapt. Fuel is the least profitable item they sell anyway, they make money on the convince store and or food. In many ways the longer charging times for DC Fast charging could be a boom for the convenience stores that adapt to having something for people to look at and buy while their car is charging. I.e Good Clean Bathroom, Well stocked food / snacks, maybe a game room, etc
Even then most stations are multi fuel, so the have Gas, Diesel, Kerosene, some even have propane or natgas. I think we will see more stations expand on that model as well.
even if the everyday car goes BEV, Diesel Trucks are not going away anytime soon so they will still need stations.
So lets do some math, The largest and most popular US Manufacture of Vehicles, Ford as a target of 40% of sales to be BEV by 2030, some EU manufacturers want to go all BEV by 2030 which I thing is aggressive and likely will not happen.
But lets say Ford target is correct and 40-50% of Vehicle sold in 2030 will be BEV's. Modern gas cars due to their complexity have a shorter economic / serviceable life to around 15 years. So cars sold in 2030 are going to be on the road still in 2045. So that is 2 decades and we are only at 50% reduction in Gas cars. Given the other factors above I dont that that would translate to a 50% reduction in Filling station, probably more like 10-15% as they adapt to BEV and expand into other offerings
Ok, and? The comment i was responding to was comparing a 1988 Suburban to a 2022 Suburban,
The fact that chevy makes smaller SUV's that are more inline with a Land Cruiser that also get batter mileage has no relevance to the comments I was replying to
Sure, but when VW sold cars that got over lab tested mileage they got in all sorts of trouble. :P
That would never be good enough for me these days. I got rid of a ~20 year old car a couple years ago, and the primary reason was that it was so out of date safety-wise. Cars really have made leaps and bounds in safety over the past couple decades, and it shows up in the stats. I wouldn't call my old car a "death trap", but it just couldn't compare with modern cars when it comes to safety features.
The Suburban is a Truck with a SUV Body
Not the same thing. the Suburban is a Full Frame massive vehicle capable of towing medium sized loads, haul alot of cargo, or alot of people
The RAV4 is a compact unibody vehicle capable of really no towing (though people will try), seats only 4 (uncomfortably if they are average American Adult size, only 2 Adults can fit comfortably in a Rav4)
While they both may be technically "SUV's" it is laughable to think they service the same need
They service the same need a lot more often than you'd think: transportation for a segment of the public who'd be better off with station wagons but decided in the mid eighties those were not cool.
> seats only 4 (uncomfortably if they are average American Adult size, only 2 Adults can fit comfortably in a Rav4)
That's all false.
Compare it to a 2022 4Runner and you'll see that gas mileage is very similar.
Toyota is known for their top tier reliability and mid to low tier gas mileage and tech.
4Runner - 17, tacoma - 19
I own a 2020 Subaru Crosstrek (30-40 MPG, auto braking, blind spot monitoring, etc.) that has been driven ~50k miles in 3 years, and nothing else besides regular oil changes so far. Hasn't even needed new brakes yet.
Just because old cars are reliable doesn't make new cars unreliable.
no, but the additional complexity necessarily does when making a relative comparison between new and old.
The backup ultrasonic sensors won't fail on a 1978 Cadillac deVille -- they don't have them.
I've got a 2011 Hyundai that's...well, it's got all sorts of problems, most likely caused by the chipmunks that call it home . The backup camera doesn't work and stereo system is silent.
But the car still drives just fine, those systems don't cause a full failure of the vehicle. The screen goes black when backing up of course, but I can still back up.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Vehicle_inspection_in_the_Unit...
However after that point, when they become unreliable due to age they become economically unfeasible to maintain due to their complexity. This problem is increased as car technicians become more in demand and as such increase demand higher wages (which they should get)
For example, changing the head gasket on a old chevy 350 one could do easily in a weekend with no special tools, on a more modern engine? Good luck. You probably have to take 1/2 the car apart just to start disassembly of the engine, and will cost several times more than the older engines to have done in a shop, often "totaling" the car
Long gone are the days for a car to have 4 or 5 owners over a 30 year serviceable life, Now they are going in to the junk yard to be parted out after their 2nd owner and maybe 10-15 years of serviceable life
And very rarely do we see or talk about the environmental impact of that. I shutter to think what is going to happen to all the BEV that will end up in the junk yard where ever component on the car is serviceable except the battery which costs $25000 to replace on a car worth $15,000
Manufacturing of electric and non-electric vehicles makes up a tiny portion of total CO2 emissions, so we're looking just at the car itself.
The first EVs are starting to get old enough that we're seeing what happens: as the cars lose range (especially the old Nissan Leafs with air cooled batteries that degraded fast), they go to owners that need less and less range from those cars. They don't get scrapped, they just get sold to someone who needs less range. The Leafs are an accelerated timeline example because of the poor cooling on those batteries.
Yes, it's 100% true that a car with a proper battery failure (not just age) will need expensive battery replacement to restore the car, but if the car truly is fully operable then that cost to install a new battery will still be cheaper than buying a new car off the road. When cars get totaled for other reasons, their batteries go on the used market and can be tested/verified for safety.
Looking online, batteries for EVs are selling for 5-15k (depending on the capacity, mostly) in the scrap market, which means that an old car can be restored to full range for that price. If the car is in good shape, that's cheaper than buying a new car...
Can it though? Tesla only recently started allowing rebuilt cars on their network, and there are tons of stories of software limited features and functionality because people replaced components outside the dealer network
Cars today with the ability to Software enable and disable parts or the entire car are a whole new trend and how many manufacturers are going to allow 3rd party battery replacements? Even if they do today when BEV's are a small fraction of their sales the recent actions of many manufacturers tell you they want nothing more then to lock you down to their network, their parts, their techs, and their subscription models (Looking at Benz with their Subscription for acceleration) .
So the idea "well just replace it with a scrap battery" sounds good, i doubt that will be the reality
>Manufacturing of electric and non-electric vehicles makes up a tiny portion of total CO2 emissions
I want to address this, why do we believe the only environmental impact of concern is CO2 emissions, have we go so far over the bend that no other environmental impacts are of concern now except CO2, even with that said I am not sure I buy the numbers or the research methodology that goes into to creating that statement. Seems to be alot of cherry picking of data to fit a narrative to me
I was trying to address those in my comment.
Very few of those batteries are new; they're coming out of scrapped cars for the most part, which means you would be restoring your old car to a partial range condition for that price (plus shipping of the part and some installation labor, which is relatively low for a like-for-like full battery swap, minus the scrap value of your own battery pack).
Based on some quick searching, a Tesla with 100,000 miles (many of which done DC fast charging, worse on the battery) retained 90% of its battery capacity and still goes over 200 miles on a single charge. (https://insideevs.com/reviews/573397/tesla-model-3-100k-batt...)
Most people do not need long range cars so this would still be worth it to buy and resell. Furthermore, as the price of new EVs drops, the battery price will also drop. The battery cannot be more expensive than the car's MSRP.
Inflation is literally calculated by taking a basket of goods including things like ‘a basic family car’, and seeing how much it costs.
So if a basic family car costs more today than it did in the past, then inflation will account for that. That’s what inflation is.
BLS CPI numbers for 'new cars' have an average annual inflation of 1.03% over the past 20 years, for a total increase of 22% - almost all of which was since 2021 (2000-2020 the average inflation was 0.39%). Up until 2010, prices were mainly falling.
Over the same 20 years, potatoes have on the other hand undergone an average inflation of 2.83% a year, for a total price increase of 74%. And much less of this in the current inflation spike - prior to 2020 the average inflation of potatoes in the preceding 20 years was over 3%.
Admittedly, BLS 'new cars' is not just 'entry level cars' - it's based on surveyed prices actually paid for whatever cars people are actually buying, so it's possible that changes in who is buying new (vs used) or what kind of cars they're buying new are keeping that number more steady than it should be.
But spot-checking a few original MRSPs for 2002 and 2022 model year Hondas and Toyotas and the like, it does look like the entry price has gone up from 'around $16K' to 'around $20K'... which is about in line with the CPI (25% vs the index's 22%) and considerably less than the increase in the cost of potatoes.
So... 'taking into account inflation,' new cars are cheaper today than 20 years ago (if you are paying for them with potatoes). On the other hand if you are paying for them with T-shirts (which have enjoyed basically 0% inflation over the past 20 years), new cars are indeed more expensive.
But since the BLS adjusts and takes into account things like how much of people's income they spend on average on cars and t-shirts and potatoes when they weight the goods in the CPI basket, all those things get rolled into the overall inflation number. And that means that 'taking into account inflation' when comparing the price you pay as an individual who chooses to buy a car in year X with the price you paid as an individual choosing to buy a car in year X - N doesn't really make much sense. It's confusing an input with an output.
Sure, a lot of advances in safety were made in the 28 years between 1959 and 1987, so your car won't fare as badly as the Bel Air, but there were plenty of other advances in the 22 years between then and when that Malibu was made in 2009, and likely quite a few in the 13 years since.
It's a free country, so you can take your chances if you want. I wouldn't rate them that highly though, FWIW. ¯\_(ツ)_/¯
Suburban vs Smart Car, sure, you "just" kill all the occupants of the smart car, and get some whiplash since you don't have headrest and possibly head injuries, since you might not have a shoulder belt.
Suburban vs modern sedan, truck, SUV, semi -- you're dead.
Everyone says yes. Nobody asks about safety features.
Your average mid market car doesn't cost that much to maintain, unless you buy a CVT vehicle out of warranty, or are truly terrible on your vehicle somehow.
Distraction (phones mainly), drunkenes, drugs, speeding, running lights, reckless driving, fatigue are the most common reason for accidents. It's the drivers, not the cars.
That you are less likely to die in a new vehicle if someone else hits you and your passengers should just be ignored? Also if you hit someone you are safer. Everyone is more safe in new vehicles it’s crazy. But yes lets focus on these other things that have always existed and wont go away until all cars are self driving.
It’s such a stupid argument and I’m sick of seeing it.
Also if you hit someone they are safer, more to the point.
I'm not going to criticize this guy for keeping an old, already built, car on the road but it's not an illegitimate concern.
Agreed, and when someone causes me to get into a crash because they're doing one of those things, I rather be in a modern car.
Not to mention there's more to life than taking the absolute safest option all the time. Driving is inherently dangerous, many of us just shrug and leave it all to chance.
Sometimes I drive my beater instead of my Honda. Sometimes I'll ride a bike without a helmet. Sometimes I'll have a smoke if someone offers.
Do I generally try to avoid hazardous things? Absolutely. I'm not going to worry about it all the time or structure life around safety though. Life is too short to worry about what ifs all the time.
It is shocking how many people have no idea how the 1-2 ton piece of metal and plastic chugging along at 100km/h powered by tiny explosions from the burning petrol - actually works.
Theoretically EVs should be the solution. They're remarkably simple compared to their gas counterparts. But manufacturers aren't just going to give up the golden goose. They market EVs as complex, technological marvels when the only real marvel is our ability to produce efficient, low weight, high capacity batteries at scale. They do everything they can to stifle independent repair behind the scenes, and we just accept it because at this point the frog has been well and truly boiled.
WRONG... Governments decided that emissions and safety were important, not the market.
>>But it never decided that simplicity and repairability weren't important. Turns out there was just more money to be made by slowly eroding those qualities.
then that is the market decided they are not important, consumers do not ask "how much does this cost to repair" because the new car buyer most likely will trade in that for a newer model before the 100,000 mile warranty is even up so they do not care.
It is the 2nd and 3rd owners problem that deals with repairability, that is also a factor in why (in normal economic years) Toyota's maintain their resale value every well and other manufacturers drop like a stone, Toyota as a reputation to be reliable and inexpensive to maintain on the used market, where say a Chevy or Ford has the exact opposite reputation
Lots of people buy vehicles based on safety reputation, fuel economy, and environmental impact. The fact that democratic governments are using their power to enforce a baseline quality for those things speaks volumes to the interests of the citizens - which in this case is almost indistinguishable from the market.
> then that is the market decided they are not important, consumers do not ask "how much does this cost to repair" because the new car buyer most likely will trade in that for a newer model before the 100,000 mile warranty is even up so they do not care.
This is only sort of true. First owners are incentivized to trade early because of the lack of reparability. That in turn enables manufacturers to make less repairable products - which aligns with their interests because it allows them to capture more of the repair market and further incentivizes customers to buy new cars more often. It's a vicious cycle that benefits only the manufacturers.