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Comment by d_sem | Hacker News Reader

When you factor in the reduced capital costs, carbon emissions, noise pollution, traffic, wear on infrastructure, health benefits, etc of electric bicycles the opportunity cost of car ownership over e-bike adoption is tremendous. The average cost of owning a car in 2022 is $10,728 per year: a figure which blows my mind.(edit: Source bankrate.com, the top hit on google)

As a personal anecdote, my household has gone from 3 cars pre-pandemic (2 commuters + 1 back up beater car) down to 1 commuter, 1 e-bike, 1 bicycle. The change has been startling in improved quality of life.

View on HN

I'd also argue the potential savings and advantages of e-bikes are undervalued because the bike infrastructure in even the best US cities isn't particularly great. I've spent a fair amount of time in Denver, and while there are some good spots and ongoing improvements, the bike infrastructure in the city is honestly a lot worse than you might expect. Better bike infrastructure would almost certainly increase the e-bike value for people who buy them anyways, but even more importantly make them worth it to a lot more people.

Denver is trying. But they have so far to go. I wish them luck and success. The driving culture is strong.

Here's a random main street in Denver: https://www.google.com/maps/@39.7322582,-104.9861576,3a,75y,...

Or another one: https://www.google.com/maps/@39.7356145,-104.9873758,3a,75y,...

...or another one: https://www.google.com/maps/@39.7383571,-104.9929042,3a,75y,...

You can click around to pretty much any street in the city, and 100% of the space is dedicated to cars. A complete bike network that enables mass cycling is a dense grid that makes basically every street safe to cycle on: http://www.aviewfromthecyclepath.com/2015/05/the-grid-most-i...

This is what trying looks like (Jersey City's Quick Build Bike Network ): https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=1mC1l8L5aBA

Or this (Inside the New Plan to Make Paris ‘100% Cyclable): https://www.bloomberg.com/news/articles/2021-10-22/how-paris...

Denver is not even really trying.

Can bikes ride in the dedicated bus lanes? (Shown in the streetview links) I know there's no raised dividers, but they look empty.

Yes, but those bus lanes shown are also allowed to be used as turning lanes by private cars.

What those busy streets don't show is that there is almost always a calm street one block over and parallel that is frequently a designated bike route (not that the designation means much, but they are better streets for bike riding).

I used to commute by bike in Denver, and it isn't the worst major city in America, but it certainly could be improved, especially in the downtown core where bike lanes exist, but drivers constantly cut across them/parked in them. I normally felt safer using a traffic lane than the bike lane downtown for that reason

Maybe legally, but because they don't have barriers protecting people from cars, they lack "Subjective Safety," which is one of the fundamental principles of Dutch cycling network design (and is essential for the average person—as in children and elderly people, not just the brave lycra warrior—to feel comfortable cycling): http://www.aviewfromthecyclepath.com/2008/09/three-types-of-...

Of course they have most of their space dedicated to cars because that is how people want to get around in Denver. Denver is a sprawling metro with around 50 days of snow per year. I'm all for bike lanes but if you start trying to create traffic congestion by taking away more of the streets from cars you will lose elections because you aren't appealing to the masses.

Cars is not how people want to get around in Denver.

Mindlessly repeating this fact does damage to the psychology of every single person that earnestly wishes that they didn't have to drive.

A huge fraction of people dislike driving.

Of course, lots of people have to get around, and most of them don't want to die accidentally, so the systemic pressure creating drivers is immense.

American road networks have been managed in a way that should be labeled criminal.

Urban renewal in the '50s and '60s was used to destroy ethnic neighborhoods for the emotional well-being of politically powerful white people.

The reason everyone drives today is because of the ethnic cleansing (via road networks) being conducted by white people in the '50s.

The roads are already devastatingly congested.

To act like American mobility networks are fair, or reasonable, or functional is something like gaslighting at a population level than anything else.

If you're clicking around on random streets in Google Maps, it's clear you have no actual knowledge of the city. It's far less dense than any place you are comparing it to. Paris has been inhabited by city builders for thousands of years. Denver for about 150.

It has such an uphill battle against its historical context as a Western U.S. mining town. Before that, the area was sparsely populated by Native American hunter-gatherers. You're not even pretending to consider the starting point.

Why not compare it to places like Salt Lake City, or Boise? Cities that actually have some similarity to it terms of population and historical development.

I encourage everyone to disregard the comment I'm replying to. It's totally ridiculous. Peak HN big-brain BS.

I live in Denver, near the streets the parent commenter posted, and I agree with those comments.

I do not know why the parent commenter chose those streets, nor what knowledge they have of the city, but if they posted 1000 more links it'd be more of the same.

Denver is not even trying. The landscape is completely dominated by cars, and utterly hostile to humans. The Mayor and City Council pay only lip service to making Denver more bike and pedestrian friendly, but little meaningful work has been done. Money has been spent, and things have been done, but none of it impactful.

In the 10 years I have lived in my house in central Denver, I cannot think of a single project, within a mile radius, that the city has planned and completed[1] that has made me feel safer as a cyclist, or pedestrian[2]. And I live in the densest part of the city, where these projects should be happening.

We even have a Vision Zero program, which is a joke. With the exception of the pandemic, traffic deaths continue to rise.

> Since Vision Zero was implemented in 2017, traffic fatalities have increased every year, except 2020, which saw a significant decrease due to stay-at-home orders and people working remotely. In 2021, traffic fatalities reached an all-time high with 84 deaths, surpassing Denver’s 2019 record high of 71 people.

This includes pedestrian deaths.

Source: https://denverite.com/2023/02/17/denvers-getting-money-to-st...

And road safety aside, bike theft is out of control in Denver. I only take my bike to do errands if I know I lock it up where lots of eyes will be on it, during daylight hours.

That all said, I am happy if the incentive program is paying off. Let's see. Maybe the city got it right. I remain skeptical, for now, given how hostile these streets are.

[1] - During the pandemic they closed 80% of the roads in Cheesman Park and have not reopened them. I am glad the city has stuck with it since it has completely transformed the feel of the place. I truly love it, more than I did before. But they did not plan this. It was a fortunate accident.

[2] - For context, my wife and I share one car, and otherwise we walk or I bike. My wife does not bike. She is afraid to, and I do not blame her.

That's a terrible part of Denver. I agree. Rome wasn't built in a day.

Why would you ever lock your bike outside anywhere in the U.S.? NYC is no better. It's actually worse out East in my experience. That's a separate issue. One exacerbated by the naive views of liberal voters.

You live in the remnants of the Wild West. Millions of poor Central Americans are pouring across the border and setting up shop in your backyard. What do you expect? You are never going to get European city living unless you move to Europe.

I suspect the comment you encourage others to disregard is pointing toward intentions and the implementation of design. What about the age of a city dictates that there is a point it must choose to dedicate 100% of available space to cars? Amsterdam wasn't as navigable by bicycle only 20 years ago.

I live in Phoenix, which is even more sprawled than Denver. I have a grocery store less than a mile from my house, and a bike path almost all the way there. Unfortunately, that path leads through an unlit and flooded underpass, through a flooded drainage canal, then ends with a stretch of grass and a guardrail to a 6-lane 55 mph road. They're so close, but there has to be an intention to complete the job. So far the powers that be intend only to serve cars. I hope that continues to improve in Denver (and elsewhere!) but sprawl and age aren't great excuses for clear choices.

Yet another person who's never been to any part of Denver outside downtown. The bikeability of Phoenix is atrocious. The two cities are not even comparable in this regard. Denver, like most places in the U.S., discovered bikeability in the last couple of decades. Meanwhile, Phoenix has maintained or even exacerbated the status quo. Denver has invested tens of millions into becoming a denser, more bikeable locale. It also elects politicians who campaign on and further this goal. The same cannot be said for Phoenix.

Tens of millions?

You're gonna have to educate me on the projects you're talking about. It's taken them 7 years to put a bike lane down Broadway and it isn't even gonna be that fantastic.

The safe streets program created some wonderful spaces and routes, so of course they dismantled them for no reason.

Cap Hill, the most densely populated area of the city has no north-south bike route that I would ever dream of taking my children on. The East-west route on 11th is a death trap that cuts in and out in order to maintain a few car storage spaces.

The crown jewel, the I-25 for bikes in Denver, the Cherry Creek Trail requires users to play frogger across Speer, a 4 lane highway, in order to access much of it.

We can go on and on with these.

DOTI is an organization that is 100% dedicated to moving cars, every bike and pedestrian project is implemented with the first goal being to not inconvenience drivers.

That being said, you are right that it's light years ahead of Phoenix.

I visited Denver, excited to see all of the supposed new cycling infrastructure, and aside from like, a handful of bike lanes here and there, I didn't feel comfortable biking around the city. Would prefer not to bike in six lanes of high-speed traffic.

I think people mistake city planning where 12min Car / 55min Bus / 2hr Walk / 30min Bike is “driving culture” where so much noise is made about encouraging people to not drive while doing nothing and covering your ears when it comes time to make not driving viable.

I would love to give up my car, we went down to one because wfh but there is no chance in hell we could go zero. We don’t even have a bus route down my street and I live in an area that is entirely dense apartments. The closest one is a mile walk to the nearest main road with no sidewalk.

I decided to check my friends who live across down and it’s 20m by car, impossible by bus (Google just gives up), 6 hrs walking, and 1hr30 biking.

I swear it’s “we tried bike lanes, what else do you want?”

Yeah that’s a very typical spread of travel times. There’s very few cities in America where a majority of trips are not best served by a car. Even cities like SF and Chi which ostensibly have good public transit, mostly have what I would call “downtown shuttles”. Any trip to the CBD is pretty reasonable by transit, but most trips both in the city and greater region are by bus which are by definition slower than a car.

Cities oriented around the car (even relatively dense ones like LA) are very difficult to adapt to transit because there are no logical nodes at which to place the transit.

I'm an outlier because I've been a bike commuter for over 10 years, but I recently bought myself an e-bike and one of the things I noticed is that it helps me cope with the poor cycling infrastructure where I am. It's really expanded the routes I feel safe taking in my city versus my "acoustic" bikes.

I live in Denver, and find the bike infrastructure to be criminally inadequate.

The same is true for the road infrastructure, but the bike lanes are set up to ensure that there's a continuous stream of dangerous and complex interactions where bicyclists would be effortlessly killed by a driver.

I ride a scooter around the city full time, like a small motorcycle, and it's so fast and easy and convenient.

I used to bike around the city but will never go back to biking.

heres a cool litle project showing where ive ridden in denver (and the world)

https://josh-strava-heatmap.herokuapp.com/

I've worked as a bicycle courier in Denver and DC.

Bike lanes have always felt kind of silly in my view. You're always being set up to collide with an opening car door or get T-boned by someone making a right on red. Worse yet, drivers will often try to overtake cyclists to make that right turn. Many are terrible at judging relative speeds.

Easy solution is to just skip the bicycle lanes. Move with traffic on the main thoroughfares. When possible operate on the residential side streets.

Bicycle lanes are part of the problem in that they create the wrong expectations for both cyclists and drivers. Cyclists still need to maintain just as much if not more situational awareness. Drivers expect cyclists to stick to the lane. As you approach any intersection you are going to want to move towards the center. Sure, get over to the side when it makes sense. No need to make a nuisance of yourself, but bike lanes create more problems than they solve.

Denver itself is a relatively rural area. Many drivers are unaccustomed to urban driving. On the plus side, you have extremely wide streets. I never attributed my experiences to a "lack of bike infrastructure". From my perspective the less planning, the better. Like the bike lanes, when they do build something, I doubt it would solve more problems than it creates.

London had a lot of these, when even after the first bigger set of infrastructure "cycle superhighways" went in.

There was a lot of outcry and fixes of some of the worst ones after various accidents.

Still a lot to do, but during COVID a lot of roads were experimentally closed, with pedestrian space increased and more cycle lanes it's been a big jump in some parts of London at least.

I'm curious. Why do you think a bike is more dangerous than a scooter? I find that on a scooter I am more prone to crashing from random bumps

Scooter as in a type of motorcycle with a step through frame: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Scooter_(motorcycle) They are heavy and stable, unlike the standing type.

They may be less dangerous than a bike because they can go quite fast, matching the speed of cars when riding on the road, which helps you avoid dangerous situations in which car drivers try to pass you without enough space to do so. Good bicycle infrastructure can minimize this, though it doesn't seem like Denver has it.

Parent may have been thinking of the other type of scooter with tiny wheels: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Motorized_scooter

u/alwayslikethis nailed it. I'm thinking of a scooter as in "a small motorcycle", with a gasoline engine. mibe is 170 cc, and it's perfect.

I think in Europe they are defined as max of 50cc and top speed of 45. So slightly under urban speed limit. Not that lower limits aren't coming more common.

Not really/exactly.

The 50cc/45 kmh or 4kw/45 kmh for electric ones defines a class of vehicles (mopeds L1, L1e-b if two wheels) that have a simpler registration and need a simpler driving license.

Electric powered bikes exist (Powered cycles, L1e-a) with 1 kW/25 kmh, while electric assisted bycicles and scooters[1] are "out of scope".

It's complicated:

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Vehicle_category

[1] the kind of electric sccoters with tiny wheels and no seat, "scooter", at least here in Italy, is commonly used to call anything with smaller wheels than a motorbike, it is used also for (powerful) motorbikes of class L3.

In Switzerland there are two types of ebikes:

- the usual pedal-assisted ebike which is classified as a bicycle, pedal assistance up to 25 kmh

- bikes with pedal assistance up to 45 kmh, these need to be registered and need a special licence plate, and you need a driving licence to ride them. Bonus is (compared to a scooter) that if you turn the motor off then they are treated as normal bicycles, so you are allowed on all the bike paths where regular bikes are.

These latter ones are actually fast enough to keep up with city traffic easily, even though in Zurich there is a lot of bike infrastructure, so you wouldn't necessarily need them. I think they are the best of both worlds, bicycles and mopeds.

I want the robocars to take over for the selfish reason of being able to safely ride a bicycle everywhere without any intervening bike infrastructure campaign.

Like, the "urban traffic problem" really can be reduced in almost every respect to either "humans are unsafe drivers" or "cars take up too much space". Shrink the fleet down to robotaxis and ebikes and you've solved everything last-mile related with no streetscape changes, leaving just the longer journeys for shared modes. As a bonus, kids become much more self-mobile again.

I previously looked into the average cost per mile of car ownership, after hearing the IRS values it at 58.5 cents/mile, and came up with this breakdown ($7,605/yr):

"The average vehicle costs $40k, is owned for 11 years, gets driven 13k miles per year, burns 25 mpg, gas costs $3/gal, insurance is $1500 per year, and the vehicle needs $900 per year in maintenance and repairs."

The Bankrate estimate seems high, but not by much. My own cost is 38.4 c/mile.

I've never really thought cost per mile is very useful, because it favours commuting by car and long distance travel. The more you drive, the lower the cost. I probably spend more per mile on transit, but I can't really compare it because the expenditures are quite heterogeneous. I could factor in the cost of shoes, but car drivers also have shoes, they just don't use them for walking as much. They might also own a bike, but that's rarely factored into transportation methods for car owners. Likewise I only use the train once a week or so; per mile it might be higher, but yearly it's nothing.

This is why I drive a 2002 Saturn despite making $140,000/year.

dont forget to factor in the number of people not hit by those missing cars

Source: https://www.bankrate.com/insurance/car/cost-of-car-ownership...

Am I well below the average? I spent $22k on a new car in 1999 that I stopped driving in 2022. I would guess I spent $15k on maintenance and repairs, but let's go on the high end and say $20k for that. That means it cost me an average of $42k / 23 = $1826 per year for that car, excluding fuel. In a year that I drove 10k miles, when the car's fuel economy was 24 MPG and the fuel cost $4 per gallon, the fuel would cost me 10k / 24 * $4 = $1667. That's $3493 per year. Why is the average so much higher?

Following the links [1] with quotes I've selected, the answers seem to be mainly:

1) You forgot about insurance

2) Your car's value was in 1999 dollars, not 2022 -- $1 in 1999 was worth $1.71 in 2022, so you need to adjust your yearly cost upwards into 2022 dollars

3) You haven't mentioned loan interest, which is additional cost if you financed it, which the average person needs to do

4) If $22K was below average for a new car in 1999, then your yearly cost will be below average as well

So just multiplying by 1.5 for inflation (an estimation) and adding $1,771 insurance brings us to $7,010. With some cost of financing and if it's a little below average to begin with, it seems to be roughly accurate.

Source quotes:

"The average cost of full coverage car insurance in 2022 is $1,771 per year"

"Monthly loan payments for new cars jumped to an average of $700 in the third quarter of 2022, while used vehicle loans averaged $525 per month, according to Experian."

"Registration fees vary from state to state. While some states charge a flat fee for all vehicles, others base the registration cost on age, horsepower or weight of the vehicle. Registration fees in Oregon are the highest in the country, ranging from $268.50 to $636.50 for first time registration. Arizona has the cheapest registration fee of just $8..."

"A car’s depreciation varies widely. In 2021, the average annual cost of depreciation is $3,900, according to AAA."

[1] https://www.bankrate.com/insurance/car/cost-of-car-ownership...

There’s little reason to carry full coverage on a car over 7 years old and, classic cars aside, almost no reason past 10 years.

>There’s little reason to carry full coverage on a car over 7 years old

Can you elucidate? I assume by 'full coverage' you mean comprehensive (you get paid if your car gets damaged), vs liability-only (other person gets paid if you damage their dar).

Doing some very approximative math, my 7 year old car is worth $12k, and adding comprehensive insurance costs an additional $500/year. Why is it so obvious I wouldn't want that?

Do you figure there is a 4% chance your car gets totaled each year (in a crash that’s not someone else’s fault)? That sounds pretty high.

I don’t buy collision for a few reasons:

1. I can afford to self-insure.

2. If I pay for collision, I’m more likely to make a claim, which will make my insurance even more expensive in the future. Also, using insurance makes the repairs more expensive, and otherwise incurs more costs to society (various people will be involved in the claims process). These costs are incorporated into the price of the insurance.

I can understand paying for it if losing your car would ruin you, or if you think you are much more likely than average to crash (in a way the insurance rate for your demographic doesn’t capture), but otherwise it seems like a bad deal.

Different states call it different things, but I’m talking about dropping “collision” and “other than collision” coverage as the car gets older.

Your chance of a total loss on the car from a collision that’s your fault or a non-collision loss is well under 4%/year (the economic break even if your additional coverage is $500 on $12K). If you can’t write a check for $12K, you might need to keep the coverage. If you can, you make money (statistically) by dropping it.

Making money based on statistics is what the insurance company does. The whole point of insurance is paying extra money to the insurance company in case I'm personally on the wrong side of the statistic.

That makes sense for ruinous losses. If $12K would be a ruinous loss, you’re doing precisely the right thing, if you assume you have to have that exact car.

Having a $5K car would probably be more financially appropriate, but that’s a side topic when considering only “buy this insurance or not”.

If you choose to self-insure, that only lowers your true cost by whatever the insurance company's profit margin is, not by the full amount of the payment.

You might come out ahead, you might come out behind, but the risk of losing the car is still, on average, costing you something.

Insurance, registration, property taxes (in some areas).

Not sure if that annual costs includes parking and other things that cost, but aren’t obvious for many people (many of us park for “free”, but we’ve paid for those space through higher rents, mortgages, etc).

For the rest of the money, the average new car costs around $50k today. And the average ownership length is about 8 years. Average loan length is approaching 6 years. So, $8333/year to service principal, plus interest, etc. Then only 2-3 years of only fuel/maintenance before starting over again. Plus the majority of depreciation is during those fist few years. On a $50k car, that’s probably $20k of lost value, if not more.

Yes, not everybody buys new cars. But, lots of people do, and they spend an ungodly amount of money on them.

It's hilarious to me that anyone would overlook 25 years of registration fees, considering that Californians literally overthrew their government because of registration fees. Maybe in their jurisdiction it's not that costly.

Registration for my 1999 car was only $70 per year and there were no property taxes. Insurance was a more significant cost and harder to estimate, but still not major.

Regardless, I agree that these expenses add up fast. If I replaced my regular commutes with a $3000 e-bike that lasts 2 years, and I spent $2k per year on Ubers and rentals for various things that require a vehicle, I would come out ahead.

Why would your ebike only last 2 years? I would say even if someone doesn't take care at all for their bike it should last 4 years minimum (and much longer on average).

The idea is to ridiculously overestimate the e-bike cost. If you do that and still come out ahead, there's a good case for it.

Right? My $2k e-bike has lasted far longer than that with a $5 bottle of oil and a few $20 inner-tubes. I spend more for 1 tank of gas than I have on that e-bike for maintenance in 4 years.

Here in NoVA, it’s not reg fees, but property taxes. Ends up somewhere around $3000/year for our two car household.

You are well below average basically across the board. Most people don't keep a car 23 years (I think about half that is average), buy fairly expensive cars (average car price today is well above what you paid even adjusted for inflation), drive cars with less than great gas mileage, drive more than 10k miles per year (15k if I remember right), and buy unreliable car brands that cost a lot in repairs. You're also not factoring in insurance.

Yes, you are below average; the average new car is owned for 8 years and the median for 4 years.

But then it is sold, so you recoup part of the value.

Also, average new car cost is the wrong metric. One ether has to use average car cost, including used cars, or track ownership costs of a new car excluding any secondary market transactions. E.g. until it is not road worthy anymore.

I'd guess the average is higher due to a few factors. First being that people, on average, don't keep a car nearly that long. Average ownership (after a quick search) seems to be around 5-7 years. Another thing might be your fuel economy given the most popular "car" in the US is a pickup truck. Also there is the cost of insurance, which I'm not sure you counted.

Do you drive without insurance or tags? Those are some major costs.

Yeah, those are crazy numbers. They're assuming the average consumer will drive a $40K car with no downpayment taking on 7~8% loan, with no capture of value when selling the car.

If that's the case, it just speaks volume of the inflation and the devaluation of the money that the cost of $10K for car being normalized.

With inflation, the money the consumer will get back when selling the car will be higher. That's not factored into the ownership cost.

> The average cost of owning a car in 2022 is $10,728 per year

And then you read stuff like: "The average monthly car payment is $716 for new cars and $526 for used.", which is more than what I pay for my flat in a EU capital

https://www.nerdwallet.com/article/loans/auto-loans/average-...

I live in an EU capital also, and pay 2-3 times that for an apartment.

That doesn't account for the increased chance of death, unfortunately.

I'd ditch 90% of my car use for a bike if I felt safe doing it... but most places in the US you really aren't. A quick google search shows bikers are 2-10x more likely to die per mile, though I didn't delve too deeply into it.

Don't forget to include the health benefits when weighing up risks! More chance of being flattened by an SUV now, less chance of a stroke/heart attack later.

I have bike commuted in the following places without near death: * New York City * San Francisco * Portland * Seattle * Raleigh Durham * Chattanooga TN * Salt Lake City

For sure there are some cities where biking is terrible, but I am not sure it’s a “majority”. It also takes some awareness to ride your bike safely in a city, but actually, doing anything in a city takes a bit more awareness and caution.

Is it possible that you could avoid death while cycling by improving your cycling skills a bit? You could join a group of (still alive) cyclists to learn the ropes.

I'm glad you managed to avoid the reaper, but every single person I know who decided to commute using a bike wound up in the hospital within a year (Boston, San Francisco, Los Angeles, San Diego).

That's like two dozen+ people without a single exception to the contrary. Yes, it's anecdata, but it's quite a lot of anecdata with a strong signal to noise ratio.

Bike infrastructure cannot share with cars given the magnitude of the consequences when the two vehicles interact unintentionally.

How is that yearly cost figure derived? I can't imagine it is repairs, gas, tolls, registration and maintenance alone.

There are a lot of people out there who drive 100 miles a day in a full sized pickup, lots of people with very high insurance prices due to accidents and the like, etc. A guy in the building I work at gets parking tickets at least once a week just out of his own laziness. I know multiple people who do no maintenance on their car until it breaks down completely and they get stuck with an expensive repair bill that could have been easily avoided and then they get a rental for the time it is in the shop. As far as I can tell a great deal of people just throw money at their cars and they are part of that average.

AAA has very similar figures with a breakdown. Depreciation is a lot but not everything:

https://newsroom.aaa.com/wp-content/uploads/2022/08/2022-You...

used and self financed costs out a majority of those costs

According to their data the cost of financing is $658/annually out of $10k total. I assume you’re thinking used cars will reduce depreciation, but it won’t go to zero and even if it did you’d still be looking at less than half of the total cost since a used car still needs gas, tires, parking, and you’d have more in repairs. Cars are just expensive.

My source is bankrate.com (top google search hit) which doesn't provide an exact line item breakdown. Here are some parameters they consider:

- Average Insurance ~ $1,771 per year

- Average Car Monthly Loan ~ $700 per month

- Average repair costs ~ $1,425

- Depreciation of initial investment. (google search returns an average new car - cost to be ~$50,000 USD in 2022)

- Gas

- Registration

Wow, I didn't realize the average price for a new car was so high! Are people mostly buying electrics, full sized pickup trucks and luxury cars these days? Whatever happened to mid-sized and compact cars?

Interestingly just looked and old frumpy minivans are right up there in price too!!

You need the Ultra Denali Tahoe CyberMegatron to ensure that you are unscathed when you evaporate whatever child has the gall to play in the street

If you have a look at the top selling vehicles, you’ve basically got it right:

https://www.caranddriver.com/news/g39628015/best-selling-car...

They went out of style as companies poured marketing into SUVs and trucks which have higher profit margins (I regularly see $70-90k pickup trucks used for office commutes!), all boosted by unusually low interest rates and 5+ year loans.

Then at the start of the pandemic, the car manufacturers slashed their orders for microprocessors in anticipation of a depression. The fabs sold their capacity to other customers which meant that when car demand didn’t crater as expected there was a massive shortage, and the car companies prioritized what chips they could get to the highest profit models.

> - Average Insurance ~ $1,771 per year

> - Average Car Monthly Loan ~ $700 per month

Both of these are crazy high. Maybe not for everyone, but 1771 per year for insurance you should be shopping around or using a broker. And a car payment of 700, that is up to the buyer, but IMHO that is absurdly high.

Have you noticed how few sedans are on the road?

I recently considered switching from a sedan to a cross-over... the sticker shock was upsetting. I make 2x as much as most of my friends and I absolutely refused to buy a cross-over, they all have cross-overs or trucks.

Ended up with a Hundai hatchback for 15k less, and bought a roof rack for 1k. When the 4 of us go snowboarding we use my small car instead of their huge expensive cars because I can fit 4 people + 4 snowboards on the roof, while they have to put a seat down for snowboards.

I don't know whats going on with everyone, a all wheel drive hatchback with a roof box is probably cheaper than the average crossover, fits FAR more luggage considering you can actually reach into the box, and if you buy a lift kit its just as good at off-roading as some random crossover is (IE: better than you think, worse than you expect)

Three specific demographics prefer the (from the factory) higher ride height of SUVs:

1) Women

2) The elderly

3) The overweight

Women have a say in over 70% of vehicle purchases in the US. So even if the vehicle is for dad, mom (who is 5’4” on average) preferring the higher ride height of the SUV will influence the purchase if she has to drive it occasionally.

The elderly and the fat have a harder time getting in and out of lower-riding cars/hatches. The country is getting both older and fatter at the same time.

These are the driving forces in crossover dominance.

This whole thread is just hilarious. All sorts of assumptions, rationalizations, and derogatory assessments of why other people don't make exactly the same car buying choice. And of course a very heavy dose of virtue signaling.

Depreciation of value would be the most significant cost. Financing costs might also factor into.

That probably includes capital/depreciation? But I agree it seems high

It seems high as the costs of depreciation are hidden. Also, depending on how the average is calculated, it might include stupidly expensive cars alongside cheapies. But the upshot is that owning a car is expensive.

It could be including depreciation, loan interest, and insurance.

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