Have you considered that most people really do not give a shit? I would much rather drive a "deathtrap" that doesn't break in 5 years than a "safe eco friendly :)" car that charges me 12 grand a year to accelerate.
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.