How to buy a good car for $1000
abio.substack.com
abio.substack.com
Case and point, I bought a car that was fine when we inspected it, but when they picked it up with the forklift they knocked a hole in the oil pan, and we had to get it towed. $100 for a new oil pan (for the wrong year lol) and I got many years out of it.
No such thing as wrong year nor wrong model, or even wrong brand as long as it works!
Honda in particular lots of parts interchange (at least used to) between Civics and Accords and other models.
I had a fuel pump die on an older BMW on 101 (Silicon Valley near googleplex). Late on a Saturday, could not get the BMW part. Found an Audi fuel pump which was similar enough, installed it on the side of the highway and worked fine. Ran for many years, still going when I sold that car.
Cops showed up to harass us about working on the car on the side of the highway.. Fortunately my friend is a big talker and kept them entertained while I finished the installation and started the car.
Or even make! Many manufacturers use the same supplier for various parts. The lock actuator on my 2010 dodge pickup is also used in Fords.
In many cases it might be better for someone to go deeper into debt on the car if it means they will be able to focus and perform better at work. It might even be worth engaging with less scrupulous financiers. Stability in transportation unlocks a lot of opportunities.
I think that was the last episode I listened to...
Usually buying a new car that already went to a facelift is your best bet as it means it has been significantly long enough in the market to get most of its early gremlins known and sorted.
Having said that I would now only consider buying a new car if I can pay it in one installment. I once loaned a new car and I regretted it immediately. Car was good but the amount I paid each month would have been better spent/invested elsewhere. I now drive a 20y old car that I paid cash last year. I checked before buying what were the main failure point (CVT transmission if not maintained properly) and bought a car with all the invoices and documentation checking it had been maintained properly and had her CVT oil changed. I expected a few things to fix (audio speaker, shocks) and negociated taking those into account.
The car drive very well, is spatious and comfortable, I could afford replacing it if it died suddently. I would only consider a new car if I decided to go electric but gas price would need to multiply by 3 at the very least. I've seen people going EV then back to gas when they realized that after ~8 years of use their EV needed a battery replacement whose cost negated any saving on gas. I think battery price needs to go down for more EV adoption. Nobody wants to buy a second hand EV if it needs a usd10-15k for a new battery and an EV becomes pretty much unsellable at this point without a replaced battery.
A car battery that lasted 300km new but now only 200km is still entirely adequate for a commuter with a 25km typical commute, and occasional 75km days out.
A degraded battery in these devices leads to things like random power-offs or dropping to 1% randomly (the display does not correct itself as it assumes it's safer to round down), particularly when it's cold. When it shuts itself down, it clearly displays that it has power remaining, but the device communicates that it thinks it knows better than you.
It is this bad software (and bad hardware) in these computing devices that ultimately what has led to EVs- new and especially used- being a tough sell far before the first one was ever released. The technology has proven fundamentally untrustworthy in low-stakes applications; why should it now be trusted in high-stakes applications?
(The answer so far has been "give them an utterly ridiculous horsepower figure", which did work, but it turns out normal cars can do that pretty easily too, and they're cheaper.)
Enough people believe this that such cars are the best deal right now, by far. You're more likely to have to replace a Toyota Engine by 200,000 miles (4%) than a Tesla Battery (3%). As long as the battery has liquid cooling (aka not the Leaf) and is relatively large (small batteries do more cycles per mile) and you do a battery health check at time of purchase to look for abuse, the battery will likely outlast the rest of the car, unless you're doing Taxi type milage. In which case you need to ensure you're getting an LFP battery, which should last close to a million miles.
Its also, by far, the easiest EV to swap a battery on yourself. It might be the only one you can reasonably do in your driveway. As its 8 bolts, 3 plugs, and a quick ECU flash to get a new one going. Its also cheaper ($8k last I looked, for the 62kw model) than any other EV to swap the battery due to the lack of cooling.
Not the perfect EV, but maybe the perfect shade tree mechanics EV.
I'd never buy a car with a traditional CVT. Used or new. They're so incredibly unreliable over time.
I wouldn't mind picking up a used EV, assuming I can get a state of health report on the battery. Something usually pretty easy to do.
It's a CVT on a car. It's unreliable. That's it's nature.
I wouldn't have bought it straight from the factory given how much of a piece of junk they are.
I usually just tell people to get their cvt fluid changed on schedule or sooner because its a steel belt and it does wear and shed metal particles.
I've seen about a dozen, and I only know about a dozen Nissan owners. In fact, I've yet to meet a long time Nissan CVT owner who didn't have significant CVT related issues, even if they allegedly did the maintenance on time. Because...
> its a steel belt and it does wear and shed metal particles.
They're so worried about the wear on a battery meanwhile this has a part that's constantly producing metal wear particles inside the transmission practically by design. The transmission will fail, and it'll probably be pretty destructive when it goes. At least from the dozen or so examples I've personally seen.
The manual may say replace your cvt fluid at 100k miles, but that average includes all the old grannies that you regularly pass on your way to work. For some drivers it should be replaced twice as often due to driving patterns, just like engine oil should, but that isn't well advertised unfortunately and I think it leads to a lot of failures.
But the wear caused from dirty transmission oil increases exponentially so there is a point where you can go from "transmission is perfectly fine" to "the transmission is totally fucked" pretty rapidly. I could see how that is seen as a flaw still, but others could argue that it is simply a maintenance issue. Just like the many engines where timing belt failures can cause engine destruction.
If they're operating properly there should be almost no actual metal on metal contact. "Fluid bearings" and all. It's an important aspect to how long the life of modern engines are. If you actually have metal on metal on most engine components it won't last much longer.
A CVT requires metal on metal friction to function at its most basic level. Your transmission is ultimately a war component, designed to fail.
You might as well argue the same about batteries. If you don't overly rely on DCFC, if you don't discharge them too much, if you stay in the 20-80% range mostly, if you're not constantly doing high-amperage pulls ("If you don't rag on them"), etc. Take care of it and it'll last a long time. Stress it out all the time and it'll wear out quick.
I'm not arguing batteries aren't an expensive wear component. They are, and they are largely the wear component to care about on a used one. I'm just pointing out CVT are also an expensive wear component. It's a double standard to be OK with one while acting like the other is some odd uncommon issue. But in the end one you can usually plug in an OBD reader in and know the actual health of the battery, the other requires you trusting the owner cared and that they and you aren't just unlucky or have an extensive tear down from a mechanic.
The worst part is dealing with dealers.
I think most of the bodies of EVs will rust out before most batteries are actually too degraded to use. Just like many ICE cars.
True, being able to know for sure you can get to work (or wherever important) is a huge peace of mind. And more than peace of mind, can be critical to remaining employed, etc.
A new car does not guarantee you that. I've had partners who are way more into new cars than me and those new cars have failed to be usable in various ways.
A brand new EV was in the shop for 3 weeks. Oops, can't go to work.
A near-new car had an ECU lock up so no way to start it. Call a tow truck to the dealer ($$$) and took a week ($$$$).
A near new EV had an EV-specific problem: it refused to charge. Car ran fine, but couldn't charge so only so many miles left. Drive to dealer, took a few days. At least warranty covered it.
> In many cases it might be better for someone to go deeper into debt on the car if it means they will be able to focus and perform better at work.
Going into debt for a car (a fast depreciating asset) is always a terrible idea. If you're super rich and can afford it, fine, have fun. But for anyone counting money, it's the second worst financial decision you can ever make (second only to carrying credit card debt).
Back to having reliable transportation, which is super important for most people.
Solution? Buy two used cars for way less than half of a new car which can still fail.
I only buy cheap used cars, but always have more than one available. Occasionally one needs maintenance and is out of commission for a few days. That's fine, I have another one (actually a few more, but even one more would do). All my cars put together cost no more than an average new car today. And insurance is way cheaper since they're all old beaters.
It's like servers. You can spend gazillion on the highest end server but it can still fail resulting in downtime. Or you buy a few cheap servers for redundancy and accept that failure is ok and redundancy is in place.
> > There's an incredible amount of value in simply not worrying if your car will run when you need it to.
> True, being able to know for sure you can get to work (or wherever important) is a huge peace of mind.
If you don't worry about it not because you trust it, but because you just think you'll take it as it comes and don't particularly care if it doesn't start one day, there's also a lot of value in that you could save a lot on used prices and servicing!
You'd have to be spectacularly unlucky for that, many sigmas away from the bell curve of average car experience.
Having owned lots of older cars, typically repairs are once every few years and are pretty cheap.
If you do get unlucky and blow an engine or similarly high cost repair, sell it for parts and buy another cheap car.
Then I was taking a long trip in the El Camino and overheated, cracking the heads. While the machine shop work was underway, one of the half-shafts driving the Corvette broke loose, severely beating the underside of the car.
It was bitterly cold January, and I was left going to work on a bicycle.
I sold both classics and bought a new Saturn. Much less style, but much more reliability.
How come the warranty did not cover other cases you listed (and did not give you a loaner/paid for a rental)?
I've never had a dealer provide any loaner car. The best I've seen is they give a coupon for $xx off a rental from the car rental place next door.
That's strange. Even when I had a Hyundai, I would get a loaner/rental from the dealer and it was not some exceptional dealer as I moved across the country with that vehicle so I dealt with two different dealers (and the second one has not even sold me a car).
I guess I should reduce it to liability only but it'll probably save me like $2, so haven't bothered.
Maybe cause I was about to get married but I loved that truck.
Honestly, it felt different for about a half hour, then just fades into the background.
With that said, I have always done my research and managed to obtain vehicles which, after maybe some high-importance fixes in the beginning, managed to last another 5-20 years without any other major work done to them.
Hell, aside from oil changes and minor fixes that I did entirely by myself, I got my last car for nearly free and it lasted me a good decade before some idiot with a jacked-up pickup - he couldn’t even see me behind him - backed into me even though I was laying on the horn like crazy.
Besides, anything prior to 2006 is going to be much easier to fix, does not have DRM, and will not spy on you unless it comes with OnStar.
Honestly, the biggest pain point these days is the lack of a true manual clutch, with the full three pedals on the floor. These vehicles are becoming distressingly rare.
But it drives, requires only the usual regular maintenance, and isn't tracking me. I'm going to drive it until it turns to dust beneath me (or more likely, like the article says, when repairs get more costly than what it's worth).
I've never understood why that would be a relevant criteria?
If the car is cheap enough, it's easy for any repair to cost more. So what?
The comparison to make is not whether the repair cost or car value is higher.
The interesting comparison is whether repairing this car I already own is cheaper or more expensive than selling it getting a different one. Nearly always (unless catastrophic failure like blown engine etc) it is cheaper to repair the one I already own.
The car I currently drive is a 2007 economy model I purchased for $2,000 with ~150,000 miles on it. I've had it for almost 10 years now, and it remains solid and reliable. I am meticulous about regular maintenance, though.
I'm driving a 2005 Toyota Matrix with 230K miles that I bought new in 2004. It's just recently needed oil added before an oil change is due.
Interestingly, a fair portion of junked cars get shipped overseas where the labor is very, very low cost and high tech, cheap labor chop shops in places like India or in some countries in Africa will have highly skilled workers basically cut out crumple zones and restore completely totaled vehicles into new looking cars and turn around and sell them. This would never be viable here in the States because of the labor cost, but when you are paying someone $1 USD a day to do highly skilled and technical labor like this it becomes very viable.
Another popular tactic where I live in Texas is to steal a car and drive it south of the border and strip it. Then buy a junked car same make and model with a clean VIN. Then ship that clean VIN second car south of the border as well and rebuild it with the stolen parts and ship it back over for resale.
Okay, I can ignore things like the car doesn't look nice or doors don't lock. But what should I actually look for? What are the things I shouldn't compromise about? Is there some useful metric to calculate useful life of the car? Rules of thumb for issues that may arise, like bad brakes, tires, engine noise, etc? What are things I can fix myself?
My point was this is cultural knowledge among blue-collar circles. My other posts were about things I learned about white-collar circles.
To try to answer your questions: I don't think there's any useful metric. Unfortunately, you never know how long a car will last. It just lasts until it's giving you a lot of trouble. The things you can fix yourself are depends more on your willingness to spend time + money on parts, not just mechanics. I'd say my family personally stop a bit earlier than some because we're not ourselves mechanics as a side hobby. The answer is different for every person. :)
China's EV cars are known, but it also has 350 million electric motorbikes.
I spent some time in Vietnam back in 2005, after getting a few lifts on the the back of mopeds in both Hanoi and Ho Chi Minh City, I decided to look up some road traffic accident stats for those cities: I never took another lift like that again.
My last car was a Subaru forester that did cost a little less, was older tho, on that I spent about $800 in total per year on to keep it alive, easily doing 20k kilometres a year.
Motorcycles arent so much cheaper necessarily.
Seems like most shops around me want $200+ in labor to do tires. That got me to just start doing it at home. Although it's a pain to do it right with spoons and not mar up the rims (or your fingers). I'm not bothering to invest in the space for a whole tire changing station in my garage. I definitely don't blame people for just eating the cost and doing it at a shop.
It's different with car tires because there's tons of places that do car tires. Far more competition with big national chains all over the place. Not always true with bikes. The labor costs they charge for dang near any little bit of work really drove me to do almost everything I can at home.
The Honda NC750 isn't a superbike, there is no reason to spend that amount of money on 2 tires.
I'm well aware they're charging a lot for it. They do it because that's what people around here pay for it. And given they've got a few days of work queued up before they even got around to fixing up the fork tubes I removed for them, it seems like they're not hurting for business charging what they charge.
You always have the option to spend more. America has this macho bike person stereotype to live upto where you must buy a bike close to 1000CC.
Please link to some prices for motorcycles that can go 75 miles per hour (necessary on the highway) that cost < $1k. 5 seconds of googling says they start at around $5k. I have a moto so I agree with the premise broadly that more should consider them. They are not as useful in all weather and of course there is risk of injury which most poor people will have no ability to pay for in our US health care situation...
There are of course other trade-offs with these modes of transport, but they are usually just as fast (and sometimes faster) at single-digit-mile distances. My hope is that as we improve biking infrastructure, biking will become an increasingly-viable primary mode of transit.
[0] https://nhts.ornl.gov/assets/2022/pub/2022_NHTS_Summary_Trav...
Is also really cheap to build.
https://ctmirror.org/2026/03/12/bike-walking-trails-lose-fed...
I can't remember seeing another one (Dodge Challenger) on the road for decades.
My original plan was to swap in a 383 big block. I talked it over with a Mopar motorhead, and he said the big block unbalanced the car, and was difficult to work on because it didn't really fit in the car. He said the 340 would produce a lot of power reliably. I took his advice and didn't regret it. The car is terrifying when one steps hard on the gas.
Banger post. My first car was a $1200 Geo Prism that I bought through the mechanic shop at the gas station up the street. It was older than my (younger) brother; got a good 5 years out of it before the transmission literally fell apart on Rt 2.
I am comfortably middle class now. I still buy budget cars because I can’t get past how outrageously expensive most cars are now. But even now I still think, every time I sit in my new (well, three year old) car: wow, this is awesome. I don’t know if my friends think those same thoughts, because I would be honestly a little embarrassed to explain why I feel that way.
Curious why not simply replace the exhaust flange? Cheap and easy repair.
I sold it off for a different $1000 car before it happened, but sounds like that's precisely what happened to you!
Unfortunately there's a fair bit if industry built around charging people who are stretched financially more, but it's possible to avoid that.
Also, that $4K cash for clunkers was a lot. I agree with the author, that would've totally gone into my pocket if they did it today. I still have my old car from college that's worth about $500 now, purchased for $1500, and I don't need it.
Obviously insurance companies make money on average for every policy. If they didn’t, they would go bankrupt. So on average, every time you buy insurance, you lose.
So insure only what’s required by law, or things that would throw your life off track if they vanished.
Sure, you can use HSA/FSA money on these things, but better to go through "insurance" and keep/use that money for other things.
If there is an accident, the insurance company will say: Your car is only worth $700 per blue book value and your deductible is $500 so here's $200 and your title is now totaled.
Buy liability only and self-insure for any damage (or just buy a new beater as needed).
In an accident, your risk becomes not the cost to restore your ride, but the cost to defend yourself from vampire litigants looking to suck you dry.
Without significant assets, you can just treat bankruptcy as your answer here. With growing assets at middle-class and higher levels, that would be a pretty painful outcome for most.
I suppose, once you are fabulously wealthy, you can wisely be self-insured again, simply trusting that your wealth can defend itself in a sustainable way?
And I guess they don't get pulled over because there aren't ALPRs or cops are ignoring the hits? I had my insurance lapse for 1 day and they still pulled me over a week later off a stale list, so idk.
Car-dependent city design a travesty, grossly hurting the poor. You shouldn't need to pay insurance and operate an expensive machine just to live.
And yet at the same time I see uninsured driving as a really bad and extremely selfish crime. You're risking seriously messing up someone else's life to save some small amount of money every month.
It's not surprising people are willing to do the bad thing when you don't really give them many other good options. We should all be better at empowering people to not have to be in such a situation where the bad option seems like best choice for them in the moment.
If the options were drive and potentially end up in jail or just take the cheap/free reliable bus to get to work, which would they take? If the options are potentially end up in jail or lose your job, which choice do you pick?
So yes it is surprising and wrong
Yeah they can walk in a city without sidewalks. They can bike in a city without any bike infrastructure. They can ride in a city without busses. Sure sounds effective and safe.
You're blind to reality if you think the average American city and town is actually designed to get by with people walking or biking or riding public transit.
Let's say you live here:
https://maps.app.goo.gl/c7Zd2Ce2aKJaq7xV6
You can't legally drive for whatever reason now. How do you get to your job in Plano? How do you go get groceries? It's a 40 minute bicycle ride each way to the closest grocer. There is no transit.
You have no answers for people in that position.
I do.
We shouldn't design our cities and towns like this.
If you find a machine you've been building tends to mangle the operators hands you don't just shrug your shoulders to the problem. You figure out the proper ways to add guards, build in lockouts, make it so people practically can't mess up their hands in normal operation as much as possible.
Bad city design can make things harder, sure. It still doesn’t remove personal responsibility for choosing to drive illegally.
> It still doesn’t remove personal responsibility for choosing to drive illegally.
I never, ever, once even slightly suggested otherwise. I've been very consistent: it's a harsh and selfish crime that routinely ruins innocent lives which should have steep penalties and strong enforcement. I just don't like that we then don't actually address why people end up making that decision, we just act like it isn't really a problem at all, meanwhile more and more people drive illegally.
Quit burying your head in the sand to the actual solutions to this problem. You'll have far fewer people stealing food when they're no longer hungry.
Also, stealing food because you are hungry isn’t analogous to driving uninsured or justifiable for stealing food. Quite the leap! Really? No one does that.
It's been the same argument the entire time.
> While better transit /may/ reduce uninsured driving
It'll do far more to reduce the rate than just taking away drivers licenses. Ooh wow you took away some paperwork and made an illegal thing they were doing more illegal. What a solution to the problem, really finding the root cause there.
> that doesn’t make urban planning the root cause of it.
It absolutely is the root cause. If you have to drive to realistically participate in society, people will drive no matter what. It doesn't matter what punishments you levy on them, they will end up doing it. Because, to them, there is no other real option. Take the bus...but there's no bus service? Ride a bike...on roads where massive cars are blasting by at 50mph while drivers are looking at their phones? Yeah, sure, you see how long taking that "option" works for you.
You edited your comment about the stealing food part, it was quite a bit more obvious about the connection the way you had it before. People in desperate positions do desperate things. If you think the only way to get to work and not spiral even deeper into poverty is to drive illegally, you're probably going to drive illegally. If you think stealing that bread is the only way you're going to be able to feed your family, you're probably going to steal that bread. Give that same person nutrition assistance, support food pantries, etc and suddenly there's choices other than stealing. Give people another way to move in society and they'll choose another way. Once again, if you think I'm trying to justify either of these activities you're massively misreading what I'm actually saying.
> Really? No one does that
Hungry people don't steal food? That's how much you're burying your head in the sand to reality? Incredible.
This is part of the reason I prefer inexpensive cars: buying only what I can afford to pay for outright means there is no loan which would obligate me to carry a comprehensive insurance policy.
Here's an interesting story that gave me greater understanding of how insurance is priced. Years ago, I worked at a place where I lived 5 miles away as the crow flies. However, due to geography, the only way to get between my work and my home was by car, using one of the most dangerous freeways in my state.
I got tired of the commute and moved closer to work, close enough that I didn't have to use the freeway (or even drive unless I was lazy) anymore. I reported the change of my residence to my car insurance company, and they cut my premium by a third.
They didn't say why, but I'm certain the reason was that I didn't take that freeway 10 times per week anymore.
I do wonder if the same thing would have happened if I carried comprehensive rather than liability. I suspect not. They may see liability-only policies as an indicator that the customer is of limited means.
The last cheaper used car I bought, I kept for about 10 years, it was $10k. I sold it to my brother in-law after that, who had it another 5 years… it would have gone longer, but he didn’t realized I had changed the timing belt before I sold it to him, so he misjudged how long the one he put on would last, and it destroyed the engine… anyway, let’s go with it..
The last new car I got, was relatively inexpensive, as far as new cars go, at $35k. If a $10k used car ran for 15 years, I’d have to keep that $35k car for over 50 years to make it worth it.
New cars are almost never financially justifiable. And that new car will run into the same maintenance issues and costs as the used one as it ages.
The nicer the car, the worse this equation gets, as increased car pricing translates to luxury, not quality. This makes them very different from work boots.
I'm also a bit surprised you'd buy a new car. Off-lease is much cheaper and they're still fairly new ish.
That place decided that free public transportation was a good investment. I think many people here would see it as a waste of their tax money. But those people are not low income. They can afford to buy cars. I occasionally hear my coworkers remark about how they would never ride one of those city busses—YUCK. It kind of grinds my gears.
Living in that place made me feel like the community actually cared about me. It made a big impact on how I think about what is worth spending my taxes on. We already subsidize the middle class (roads ain’t free!) and we subsidize the heck out of corporate America. A small slice of those subsidies would make a big difference for people at the bottom.
More than half of the federal budget is for entitlements.
Also, so what? It should be more.
https://taxpolicycenter.org/taxvox/what-will-tax-provisions-...
https://www.npr.org/2025/11/05/nx-s1-5590112/trump-beautiful...
"When people wave off Waymo or bus lanes or bike lanes because car culture is fine, they mean it works fine for them."
I doubt the "HN crowd" was about to do anything, but it'd be better if someone saw some sort of market opportunity here. It sounds pretty miserable not being able to get to a well paid job. I personally appreciate all the people who lent me money and sold me cars. It enabled a lot of income for me, over a lifetime.
US automakers have chosen to abandon anything not a $40k-$100k SUV or pickup truck, and purposely minimize production to optimize for profits over volume. You can either leave the country, pay the captive market tax, or import a cheap car when allowed to.
Chinese automakers cannot find enough marine capacity for exports at the moment (currently at a ~12M unit/year export run rate). Imports are allowed eventually imho, it’s just a matter of when (elections and representation turnover rate). Until then, the poor are held hostage for profits (as is tradition in the US).
Never happens on the timescale of the next decade, maybe two. How far along is California high speed rail? When did they start?
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/California_High-Speed_Rail (construction began in 2015 and it won’t be operational until at least 2031, 16 years later) If you break ground today, you won’t see new public infrastructure operational for at least a decade. Brightline light rail was built in Florida and is approaching insolvency, even with 3M riders per year.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Brightline
We could provide subsidies to move the disadvantaged to major urban cores with public transportation systems, I’d support that. Have to find the funds to do it though. Cheaper than trying to build anything new in the US for sure.
https://dailyyonder.com/half-of-all-rural-counties-are-losin...
https://ecpmlangues.unistra.fr/civilization/geography/map-us...
https://www.ers.usda.gov/data-products/poverty-area-measures...
(Where will those bikes, busses, and trains you mention be built? China, as they are 1/3rd of global manufacturing capacity)
“A society grows great when old men plant trees in whose shade they know they shall never sit.”
Consider the US has $40T in debt and no will to raise taxes at this time, and therefore no will to spend on public infrastructure projects. Where will the capital come from?
How and when will we start? How many elections need to occur to appropriate funding? How much of the US electorate has to turn over for the right people to be elected to appropriate funding? Until shovels are in the ground, it’s vaporware and dreams.
The mayor of Carmel, IN thought traffic circles were better than intersections and wanted more mixed use development. They have that now, nearly every intersection in the city has been replaced over time as they were due for routine work.
In Detroit they are in the process of building out a 29 mile greenway around the city.
These city level projects are a lot more important than the national ones, when it comes to reducing car traffic in cities and having an impact on people’s most frequent trips.
Seeing this at a local level could inspire more rail connections between cities, which could also come from the private sector. We have already seen a couple examples of this.
For anything funded by the federal government, you’re right. They have a huge mess on their hands, and need to get serious about cleaning it up. They have no business kicking of any major public works projects until that happens (though that has never stopped them in the past). But at a local level, things can still move forward and we are seeing it happen to some extent, though it often still feels more like a hobby than a firm conviction.
It’s a battle worth fighting but public transport infrastructure isn’t going to happen overnight and people will need cars that won’t bankrupt them until then.
Trains need infrastructure, but a lot of the train infrastructure is already there, it just needs to be repaired and modernized. The USA freight network is one of the most comprehensive train networks in the world. The problem is that is has gone through decades of neglect, and trains are required to crawl through a large portion of the network so as to not derail. Urgent modernization of the rail network could happen in years instead of decades.
I agree Americans love their cars, but will they love them with oil prices above $100-$120/barrel persistently? To be determined.
https://www.visualcapitalist.com/how-american-households-hav...
> Personal preference plays a significant role in changing attitudes toward parenthood. Among Americans under 50 without children, 57% said they simply didn’t want kids, while 44% preferred to focus on other priorities. Financial concerns also weighed heavily, with 36% citing the cost of raising children—three times the rate among childless people over 50.
https://www.socialexplorer.com/home/post/the-us-urban-popula...
> According to the 2020–2024 American Community Survey 5-Year Estimates, approximately 286 million Americans (roughly 94 percent of the population) live in metropolitan statistical areas. Just 17.7 million people, about 6 percent, live entirely outside any metro or micropolitan area.
> The popular image of America as a land of small towns and open plains is, statistically speaking, a minority experience. The story of 21st-century America is, above all, a story of cities.
Your 57% lacks relevance to the current conversation because it is 57% of a small percentage of Americans.
42 to 43% of Americans are either under 18 or a parent of an under-18-yo. Plus of course some outside that group will soon become parents. And some are empty-nesters who prefer to keep on living in the neighborhood they lived in when they were raising their children.
https://pmc.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/articles/PMC11537490/
https://www.npr.org/2026/04/09/nx-s1-5777587/teen-birth-rate...
https://www.census.gov/library/stories/2025/09/older-mothers...
https://www.scrippsnews.com/us-news/number-of-americans-who-...
https://ifstudies.org/report-brief/the-demographic-dead-end-...
https://ifstudies.org/blog/theres-no-mystery-to-americas-fer...
https://ifstudies.org/insights?id=3886
https://ifstudies.org/blog/1-in-4-projecting-childlessness-a...
Desired family size is still 2.7 kids, and has been stable at that number for over 50 years: https://news.gallup.com/poll/694640/americans-ideal-family-s...
A growing gap between how many kids people want and how many they have militates against copying the dense housing patterns of Asian countries that have the lowest birth rates in the world.
https://ourworldindata.org/which-countries-have-already-pass...
https://ourworldindata.org/population-simulation-tool
Terra Incognita: The Economics of a Shrinking World [pdf] - https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=49352811 - August 2026
The demographic future of humanity: facts and consequences [pdf] - https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=44866621 - August 2025 (400 comments)
The Great Demographic Reversal: Ageing Societies, Waning Inequality, and an Inflation Revival - https://www.suerf.org/wp-content/uploads/2023/12/f_fa99ccdbe... - SUERF Policy Note, Issue No 197, October 2020
“Talk is cheap, show me the fertility rate.”
Sure, people are having less kids because we banned building housing and then filled the housing we have with government subsidized illegal immigrants. What’s your point?
~40% of annual pregnancies in both the US and internationally are unintended (per the Guttmacher Institute and the UN, respectively), so even with fertility rates down in teens and the 21-40 cohort, we still have a long way to go in preventing unwanted pregnancies and children (which translates into a further declining fertility rate curve forward looking, model accordingly).
Birthgap - https://youtube.com/watch?v=m2GeVG0XYTc (two hours, but substantiates every assertion I’ve made, provided as an additional supporting citation)
I assist thousands of folks a year seeking permanent birth control obtain it, mostly the childfree but occasionally someone who already has a kid or two, ama; this is the cheapest, easiest win as it relates to avoiding suffering around unwanted children, and the emotional, time, and monetary costs of unwanted children at scale is simply too high. The historical total fertility rate was because women were not educated and empowered; forward looking fertility rate is the true neutral rate.
> The historical total fertility rate was because women were not educated and empowered; forward looking fertility rate is the true neutral rate
It’s not possible for an outcome that would result one extinction of the species to be the “true neutral rate.” Rather, even if what you say is true (and I think it isn’t given people’s stated preference for 2-3 kids) what you’re seeing is a social contagion that will self correct when child-agnostic cultures die out in favor of cultures in which having children confers higher social status.
The only culture whose fertility rate isn't declining and converging around 0.5-1 is those in Israel, and they're going to have to figure out how to support themselves economically as the US tilts away from doing so due to political winds changing.
Good luck to those desiring "children confering high social status" as inflation continues to increase and the cost of everything increases long into the future due to climate change and structural demographics shrinking working age populations globally. Being poor sucks, everyone figures this out eventually, and the future will not be as nice as the recent past was. Kids have a cost, can those who want them for status afford them? We'll find out soon enough.
Hard to take you seriously as a “researcher” when you apply antisemitic tropes to math. Israel’s GDP is about $700 billion, and growing at 3% (that’s $20 billion) a year. US aid is about $3 billion a year.
It’s one thing to mime the meme for shits and giggles, but you’re now trying to use that in a rational argument.
U.S. Muslims and Mormons both have a total fertility rate well above replacement (2.2-2.5). https://news.rakwa.com/2025/08/29/muslim-and-arab-fertility-...
Muslim Americans are among the most highly educated demographics in the U.S., and Mormons are around the average. So it’s definitely possible without turning the clock back before women had education and choices.
The same is true for the definition of “childless” people. It counts my parents, who don’t have children living at home, but have my kids coming over to their house multiple times per week. Only 15% of women never have children. Most people arrange their living circumstances with the goal of eventually having kids. And once the kids grow up and leave, most people want to stay in the same area.
I'm sorry to shatter the dreams of most Americans, but the world has finite resources. Buying a car when you're poor is hard, because cars are expensive, because they are extremely resource demanding. Even with all the subsidies drivers receive, they still usually struggle with the cost.
By the way, you don't have to look at public transit schedules when your public transit works. I recommend visiting countries outside the US that have functional infrastructure.
I go to Japan once or twice a year. Even in Japan, many people take regional rail or (gasp!) busses, and those don't run every 5 minutes.
we pay our government to point guns at other people, so that resources become their problem and not ours
No. Globalism is bad. Better to have cars made domestically that are a bit more expensive to buy, but support local jobs. Better yet, ban electronics in cars so you can actually hold onto them and repair them yourself.
No one is banning electronics in cars, and US legacy auto will never catch up. They made their choice to prioritize profits over investment.
Assessing the Evolving Global Competitiveness of the US Auto Industry - https://itif.org/publications/2026/03/23/assessing-evolving-... - March 23rd, 2026
> While the Big Three automakers—General Motors, Ford, and Chrysler—accounted for 92 percent of domestic auto share in 1965, this share would fall by half, to 46 percent, by 2015, and to 38 percent by 2024.
> From 1995 to 2022, China’s share of global automotive vehicle output skyrocketed eightfold, from 3 to 25 percent, while the U.S. share slid from 23 to 14 percent.
> In 2007, cars sold in the United States contained 38 percent U.S.- or Canadian-made content on average; that portion declined to 18 percent by 2023.
(BYD sells more EVs internationally than Ford does in total, and they intend to be the largest global automaker in the next five years)
BYD Says It Will Be The World's Largest Automaker In 5 Years. - https://finance.yahoo.com/sectors/technology/articles/byd-sa... - June 11th, 2026
China's BYD Overtakes Ford in Global Sales for the First Time - https://finance.yahoo.com/news/chinas-byd-overtakes-ford-glo... - February 12th, 2026
Also: "Don't be snarky."
(FWIW I don't think you meant to do either of these things, but the worst internet patterns propagate unintentionally.)
I noticed it on the front page. An hour later, it's on page 3.
<edit>
Now I'm just curious to see how fast the downward trajectory is on this currently 70-post article is. Still in the 1-2 hour range and now it is on page 4 of HN.
Buying a new cheap car is the safest, and I'm sure there are always some models available under 20K.
Poor people (or even non-poor people) can buy the cheapest transportation available. US used to have the cheapest cars in the world. Its completely changed now, all you need to do is to ask your administrators to let the manufacturers from China bring them in.
1) They can buy a cheap car that will cost nothing in fuel. This is the worlds cheapest SOLAR CAR: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Hk6aTKV-des
2) They can buy EV KEI cars (https://insideevs.com/news/807141/byd-racco-kei-driven-japan...)
3) They can ask for biking trials to be built. Atlanta seems to have built many miles of connected trials.
4) EV Golf carts are a perfectly acceptable form of transportation: https://www.bloomberg.com/features/2023-golf-cart-kingdom/
Ask your admin to allow cheap cars/KEI/golf and work with your local city to build walk/bike/golf-cart trials. Its a one time cost, you can make transportation cheap permanently.
The Poor Man’s Shoe Theory, widely known as the Sam Vimes “Boots” Theory of Socio-Economic Unfairness, is a concept that explains how those who are poor often end up spending more in the long run because they can’t afford to make quality purchases up front. This idea was popularized by Terry Pratchett, the acclaimed British writer, in his 1993 Discworld novel Men at Arms, through a passage in which the character Captain Sam Vimes observes the realities of poverty and consumption.
“Take boots, for example. He earned thirty-eight dollars a month plus allowances. A really good pair of leather boots cost fifty dollars. But an affordable pair of boots, which were sort of OK for a season or two and then leaked like hell when the cardboard gave out, cost about ten dollars. Those were the kind of boots Vimes always bought, and wore until the soles were so thin that he could tell where he was in Ankh-Morpork on a foggy night by the feel of the cobbles.”
“But the thing was that good boots lasted for years and years. A man who could afford fifty dollars had a pair of boots that’d still be keeping his feet dry in ten years’ time, while the poor man who could only afford cheap boots would have spent a hundred dollars on boots in the same time and would still have wet feet.”
https://footwearmagazine.com/poor-man-shoe-theory-poverty-co...
Buying a Lexus would be a very stupid idea. You don't buy a luxury/premium model for cheap. Way too much gimmicky stuff/gadgets that can break and parts price are way too high.
When you buy sub $2000 car, you look for models that were already in the relatively affordable range and have been best sellers of their category: good knowledge from mechanics, good and affordable spare parts availability.
Since you are sure, can you name a few?
You can't because none exist. There are no new cars in the USA for less than 20K.
The alternatives offered here are nonsensical. Where in the US does one buy this youtube solar car or KEI cars? Nowhere, that is where. They are not sold in the USA.
Golf carts are legal on hardly any roads so that is another non-starter unless you live in a neigborhood where they are allowed and never plan to go anywhere outside of it.
Cycling is great, that is the only practical suggestion on the list. But of course a bike is not a car so if someone actually needs a car, a bike is not a car.
For anyone poor who needs cheap transportation, old beater cars are the best.
Don't have to be poor either, for anyone who doesn't want to throw good money away at depreciation, old cars are the best deal. As an engineer in Silicon Valley I could technically afford many kinds of expensive cars but I've yet to ever spend more than 20K on any car or truck. Buy used, keep forever, that's the best.
In my area it does show 1 2025 Nissan Versa allegedly for sale at about $19k.
A quick search shows me a bunch of 2025 Nissan Versas for sale between 16K-17K, so someone buying this dealer leftover for 19K gets an instant depreciation of ~2.5K.
There is no such thing as a new cheap car.
First, the cost of labor is very low.
Second, with the exception of food, you get what you pay for. The housing is of poor quality compared to what you get in the west—it’d never pass inspection there. Everything is made with cheap materials. The cars are just decent enough but also aren’t salable in the west—they wouldn’t meet crash safety standards (no airbags, insufficient bumpers, etc.). Think 1970s-80s econobox.
Third, the government is more than willing to allow increased housing density. Towers are popping up everywhere. But the transportation infrastructure is still terrible, traffic is congested, and commutes are long. It can take over an hour to move 10km there.
All the houses are built with concrete. They are pretty much indestructible. You could say India has the worst products/services in the world, but housing might not be one of them.
> The cars are just decent enough but also aren’t salable in the west—they wouldn’t meet crash safety standards (no airbags, insufficient bumpers, etc.). Think 1970s-80s econobox.
Mahindra is selling cars in Australia: https://www.mahindra.com.au/
> Third, the government is more than willing to allow increased housing density. Towers are popping up everywhere. But the transportation infrastructure is still terrible, traffic is congested, and commutes are long. It can take over an hour to move 10km there.
Spot on!
Fair enough that the housing is made from concrete but the quality is still pretty poor. The foundations are uneven, as are the floors. The doors, windows, flooring, plumbing fixtures, etc. are, for the most part, cheap junk. The same is happening all around the world as builders race to the bottom, but India was pretty far down there. They’re in good company though; the same is true of all poorer nations.
New cars are nice - shiny and reliable but you pay a bit. It can also be risky from the financial point of view if you buy on credit.
A tip for buying cheap ones is buy off someone wealthy who doesn't care about the money from the old car and would otherwise get like $0 from a dealer.