Ask HN: What's Your Car?
I'm interested to know if there's a pattern in the cars purchased by the HN community (programmers, lawyers, C-suite people, etc.)
Notably my wife drops me off at the bus stop most mornings (lucky to have a bus in a rural area.) Also we've got 8 horses but no pickup truck because... If you need to haul something big you can pay somebody to do it for a fraction of the monthly payment on a big-ass truck. If we didn't have lots of trails on our property we might trailer riders somewhere else but as it is, we don't have to.
Kind of opened up my life too. I used to stay home a lot because I found driving boring and stressful but now I look for excuses to drive places. I’ve done a bunch of hikes 1-2 hours away. Go out to the gym, etc.
* I don’t like that they can change the software anytime they want without my permission, possibly shutdown my car, limit changes I can make to it, etc. I’d rather fully own it.
I'm not sure why exactly. I don't hate cars or anything. But it's like talking about crypto or English football. People don't talk about it for intellectual gratification. If I try to, I'll just end up disappointed.
It's pretty decent, though I wish it had better sound insulation. But cost of ownership has been extremely low, and it's shockingly reliable more so than any other car I've owned. I don't really buy into the whole FSD hype, but overall I think Tesla makes very decent cars for the money.
For instance, it doesn't handle as well as my previous BMWs, the materials aren't as nice, but it is nicer than the average economy car and it's extremely quick. It's also quite a bit more affordable than entry level BMWs.
I'm tempted to drive it into the ground or at least keep it another five years. If stock pops a bit more, I'd like to buy a 'fun' sunday car (used 911 perhaps?), we'll see.
After I started working remotely in 2020, I gave my car - a 2011 Chevy Sonic - to my adult son. Two years later when we decided to travel full time, we sold our other car - a 2011 Ford Fusion for peanuts to a friend of our sons because he needed a reliable car. Once we decided to make our nomadding seasonal, we got another car.
I absolutely hate spending money on cars. We have one car now.
Had the required range (>400km listed), physical controls for important functions, snappy infotainment center with CarPlay and Android Auto, and it was small enough for our garage.
Has quite tight turning radius which is great in the city, and was a fair bit cheaper than the Kia Niro EV.
Quite pleased with it so far overall.
I'll probably drive it into the ground because I drive like a maniac. A new car is wasted on me.
Con: I pay my ass of in taxes because its a diesel. Pro: I imported it for free.
A replacement would more likely be basic hybrid than luxury EV because I don't want the rapid obsolesce that comes with modern electronics.
Love the design, easy to work on (not afraid of stripping the engine) and they're fun to drive. Plus it has a great commumity!
Still have loads of spare parts including the almost-unicor-status official roof bars :)
Platform/SRE/DevOps/etc by trade.
It’s got a sweet V8, it’s a ton of fun, and it’s pretty straightforward to work on. The last of the great American V8 sedans unless for some reason you’d want a Charger.
SWE w/ just under four years of experience