Average US vehicle age hits record 12.6 years amid high prices
apnews.com
apnews.com
https://www.motor1.com/news/698055/toyota-13000-dollar-hilux...
In every aspect the Tacoma is superior, especially at the high end of the trim levels but even with the base models.
I do not understand people's fascination with them, other than the fact that they are seldomly seen in the US.
For towing the Tacoma is better and the hilux is only better for hauling if you get the commercial models with the reinforced flatbeds.
Even for "hard core" offroading the Tacoma is better with a much better approach angle and a departure angle within 0.5 degrees of the Hilux.
In non-emerging markets, like Australia, the price is the same which makes the obsession with them even stranger because a Hilux SR5 (three trim levels up) is actual, literal, trash compared to a Tacoma SR5 (base trim level) but is $5,000 USD more-- again, in markets economically similar to the US.
They are only "cheap" in markets where the average annual income is more like the average monthly income in the US.
Is it the diesel? Some kind of talibancore aesthetic thing?
I do not think that an length increase of the width of a single standard playing card is a practical difference.
It is 2.9% wider, that may be noticeable.
The hilux used to be a lot smaller than it is now so maybe people are remembering the hiluxes from 25-30 years ago?
The champ looks like it would do terrible in a crash, and it doesn't have the federally required backup camera.
I replaced it with a 2019 with about the same amount of miles on it and every single feature I wanted in 2021 and have put 5K miles on it since. The best part is that after an argument with my insurance company over used car prices, the difference between what they gave me for my wreck and what I bought the first car for was $500.
Buying a brand new car to me is not much different than buying a designer bag or a pair of Jordans... you aren't paying for the utility, you're paying to be seen with the item. And then 2 months after the newness has worn off and everyone you know has seen you with the item, you're still stuck with the payments.
When you switch from an old car to a new car, the old car doesn't disappear. Someone else buys it, and when that person switches, someone else will buy it. And on and on, until it is no longer roadworthy "enough" and either is junked or exported to a country where the standard for roadworthiness is lower.
The fact that the average US vehicle age continues to climb is an indicator that the durability of vehicles continues to climb. That's it.
That is, if vehicles are currently more expensive, the threshold where a vehicle isn't worth maintaining would go up.
So this suggests that it isn't necessarily that vehicles are inherently becoming more durable.
Aside from collision damage I can keep any old car on the road -- newer cars, not so much.
Find an old car and figure out why they quit driving it plus whatever happened from it sitting around (seals going bad and whatnot) then drive it over to the DMV to get registration... the story of pretty much every car I drove in the '90s.
We can't afford anything newer either, but that's really not a consideration. We're stretching the repair of our (manual everything, even non-ABS brakes) trucks as far as it will go before we embrace the suck or modern cars that meet the Central Scrutinizer's standards.
It doesn't look like any of that is going to change, so I'll be nursing older cars along for, in all likelihood, the rest of my life.
Example study: https://www.tandfonline.com/doi/full/10.1080/15389588.2014.9...
> In line with previous results, this study concludes that ESC reduces the risk for single-vehicle injury accidents by 31% when controlling for various confounding factors related to the driver, the car, and the accident surroundings.
The reason I ask is that, as I understand it, the collection happens via cellular modems talking to cell towers to report back to the mothership; it's not through, e.g., connecting your smartphone via bluetooth. (The non-smartphone information they send is about car usage habits and statistics, including location.) I'd be curious what the make/model of the car is which doesn't have this hardware.
The sibling comment about the 2013 model is more likely since I don't know when manufacturers started putting cellular modems in their cars. "Brand new", not so much.
https://www.eff.org/deeplinks/2024/03/how-figure-out-what-yo...
https://www.eff.org/deeplinks/2024/03/how-figure-out-what-yo...
Did some drifting back when, in a car set up with all sorts of tricks, including 4 wheel line locks on the brakes. Those were used more often to put the car into a spin than to recover from one.
In the context of the article; NHSTA mandated stability control in 2012, so any car newer than average is guaranteed to have the feature.
Just don't drive like an idiot and/or learn how to manually recover from a skid.
I mean, I've never been in a skid that wasn't a direct result of driving like an idiot and have never crashed due to loss of traction. Probably the worst case was in my old BMW 2002 where I was making a left turn at an intersection, on wet roads, sideways, and instead of panicking I just gave it more gas until the rear end came around.
There was a Top Gear segment on why so many Finns are F1 drivers, etc., and it was actually good and informative, talking about their approach to childhood drivers ed.
We're talking skid pans, advanced defensive driving techniques, while you're a teenager. Dealing with hydroplaning, black ice, brake failure, all of it.
The one interesting thing in the future may be software longevity/reliability. A 12.6 year old car had some software, but nothing like a 3 year old car or a new car. Will car companies be pushing updates for 2024 models in 2036?
Blind spot detection, collision warnings, additional lighting, and adaptive cruise control substantially reduce accidents.
Electric drive trains have fewer moving / service required parts; Whether that be motors (no combustion, no brushes, not even 10,000 mile oil changes), brakes (reduced because of regenerative braking)
And ultimately I think vehicles as a status-symbol is really wasteful. At least if you spend that money buy a nicer house the value will likely increase rather than go to 0.
with an average U.S. new-vehicle selling price of just over $45,000 last month
Even if I were a multi-millionaire I would never pay that kind of money for a depreciating asset so I'm going to keep driving my 18 year old car.
I took my car in for maintenance and the dealer offered me more than I paid for it on the spot.
American automakers no longer make compact cars. Actually, they don't make full-size cars either (with the sole exception of the Ford Mustang).
Once you understand that, you understand why everything's fucked up. 20 years ago, each of the Big 3 would sell 6-figure sums of compact cars, all for less than 25K (inflation-adjusted).
Turns out that they'd rather make 50K SUVs and 100K trucks instead.
Part of that is safety and fuel economy standards that make it functionally illegal to turn a profit on a small car now (and electric compact cars that will be forced at gunpoint in the future will continue to be complete garbage range-wise simply because they don't have enough room for the batteries, so there's no point in designing one- customers already refuse to buy full-size EVs for this reason).
Part of that was people getting used to negative interest rates, and US automakers tooling up to exploit that fact.
Part of that is increased labor costs make it uneconomical to make an inexpensive car (which is specifically why the US bans imports of Chinese compact EVs- even if they passed safety regulations, which they don't).
It's not actually possible to solve this in the short term; which is why the meta remains "buy a Corolla and drive it until the wheels fall off".
Unless you’re going for cars >5 years old or cars with a big mileage, used cars will also be very expensive.
I'm holding out hoping some manufacturer will rebel against the trend and make a car with real door handles, a physical key, knobs and buttons for all controls, etc.
I'm not paying a monthly subscription fee for heated seats and I don't want my car to not start because it doesn't have an internet connection.
Agreed that this is largely a function of higher quality/longer lasting vehicles though