Hacker News Reader

Comment by tommy_mcclung | Hacker News Reader

Founder/CEO here. This data is from hundreds of thousands of offers made by dealers on CarWoo! This is likely one of the purest sources of new car pricing anywhere. Would love to answer any questions.

View on HN

Neat stuff. Some of the data seems "off", for example:

https://carwoo.com/new-car-prices/M80025559-2013-mercedes-be...

4 Door Sedan S550 RWD

AVG MSRP $102,604

AVG PRICE $421,414

AVG DISCOUNT -290.0%

How are you getting an average price of 421k?

Good question, looks broken. We will fix it.

Hi! You accept user password over http. I don't feel comfortable doing that. I am sure using https is not hard for you guys.

What's the advantage of CarWoo over Edmunds? As a comparison I looked at the 2014 version of my current car:

http://carwoo.com/new-car-prices/T85363842-2014-mazda-mx-5-m...

Versus

http://www.edmunds.com/mazda/mx-5-miata/2014/?style=20048458...

Edmunds tells me what invoice is, what MSRP is, and what most people end up paying for each of the trim levels. I don't see much information on CarWoo, other than for the base model.

What we're doing is looking at the actual MSRP offered by dealers on vehicles in inventory inclusive of options. On Edmunds, KBB or any other pricing site what you're looking at is what you theoretically would pay if the vehicle you wanted existed in inventory and doesn't really represent true pricing at the moment. Their pricing isn't really representative of what happens when you go to a dealership and say I want this car, with these options. Many/most times that exact configuration of vehicle doesn't exist. (With a few exceptions... Honda's and Toyotas are different). Our AVG MSRP is really a view of the price with options included in dealer inventory and not just the MSRP as configured by the manufacturer. What people have told us is that they want to know how much it's actually going to cost me when I go to the dealership to buy a Mazda 5 (enter your favorite car here) . Our pricing reflects that almost perfectly.

Can you tell me what sort of larger car/suv has the best ride comfort-to-mpg bang for the buck under 35k that can also fit a 200lb Newfoundland?

If only car sites alllowed for this sort of discovery process!

I had a 170lb St. Bernard at one point and she sort fit into a subaru outback. This was a while ago.

Fitting a 200lb dog is a matter of perspective too. What do you mean by fitting? I have a 100lb dog right now and he fits into my crv just fine, but he fits into our Odyssey a lot better. He can lie completely spread out, doesn't have to curl up, etc.

Sites that have tried to do things like this in the past have been very cumbersome and ultimately unuseful.

You need to decide if you dog can fit into a compact SUV or if you need a medium sized SUV/crossover. There is a big difference in size/mpg/and cost between those two categories of vehicle.

If you want a compact SUV look at ford edge/subaru forester or outback/mazda CX-5/toyota rav4/honda CRV or subaru tribecca on the compact, but larger size. The CRV will have your best real world mpgs there, but gives up a lot in power.

If you get into larger crossover/SUVs you should look at the honda Pilot/toyota highlander-4runner/subaru tribeca/mazda cx-9/ford explorer or flex (if you don't care about off road at all).

The problem is they all have their good and bad things and some of the stylings are way off. Also, reported mpgs and real life mpgs are sometimes very different. The best thing to do is to troll user forums for these vehicles and learn as much as you can. Good luck!

Here are user-collected mpg reports: https://www.fuelly.com/

I've actually had an idea for something like this for a number of years (I used to work for ClickMotive) but it's so very hard to gather this data.

The use cases that lead to my thought were: - what cars on the market, both new and used in the last 4 years, offer a 3rd row of seating? - what cars offer a big enough back seat for two rear facing car seats and a twin stroller? (far fewer than you'd believe)

Is this from final offers or a combination of all offers from initial to lowest? Or does it only include final, purchased, confirmed offers?

Reply on news.ycombinator.com