They don’t mention the potential contribution of cars becoming more reliable over time. I would expect that that’s part of it though I don’t doubt that the shorter term factors that the article focuses on have dominated recently.
Cars are far more reliable than they used to be. Remember, even through the mid 90s many cars came with 5 digit odometers because they weren’t expected to ever reach 100k miles.
Nowadays a car lasting >200k miles is totally unremarkable.
More reliable cars + fewer miles on the people working from home + used and new cars being astronomically expensive or simply unavailable + new loans being stupid high
I would argue that cars today are perhaps less reliable than those made 12.5 years ago.
The proliferation of "lifetime" non-serviceable CVTs and digitally controlled everything will probably result in a lot more premature deaths of vehicles.
Yep I agree, and doing any maintenance on modern cars requires a super expensive (or sketchy pirated/ebay purchased) diagnostic computer from the manufacturer.
For example power steering in older cars was a simple hydraulic mechanical system that could fail gracefully and be troubleshooted with minimal tools. Nowadays steering is electronic drive-by-wire and has many more components like actuators, sensors, etc. that can all fail and stop the entire system.
New car prices have gone up over time. I wonder if something like (new car price)/(average car lifespan) or (new car price)/(average miles driven) is stable in the long term. (Of course in the short terms car prices are rather inflated right now.)
Also rust - or lack thereof. My 2004 Volvo has no rust at all and I am in the Northeast. I know that this, and other aspects of reliability, depends greatly on the make and model, but it does seem to me that cars are less susceptible to rust these days.
The car I drive is 16 years old and right now I have no intention of buying new.
Why, today's cars come with too much complexity, I do not want automatic anything plus the trend to internet connected cars annoys me to no end.
Also new costs way too much, if my car fails beyond repair, if I cannot find a good alternative I may abandon driving all together and do uber and public transportation when available. Right now for short errands, in the summer, I either walk or bike.
This is it for me. I could probably afford a modest new vehicle now, but instead I'm rebuilding the engine and transmission on my 20+ year-old. The money I'll spend would cover a good chunk of the sticker on a dealer vehicle, but everything built in the last 15 years is more electronic than I want it to be. I spend some time every year in a variety of "offroad" conditions (snow, sand, mud, usually) and it's entirely too common for newer vehicles to get stuck in those places because some of their electronics decided to disable the vehicle's transfer case once it lost traction on too many wheels.
There are some pretty decent newer models that can be used as platforms and made to do those things well, but then you're spending a pile of money anyway.
But I'm sure I'm in a tiny minority on this, and for most people, it's simply a matter of not being able to afford a car payment right now.
My Ford F150 from 2015 is going just fine. It'll go for a lot longer too - it's pretty much infinitely repairable.
No touch-panels, no weird dash controls that do god knows what. Clock that shows the time; thermometer that shows the temp.
Made for folks who want to get there, not figure out how to get there.
It was in a fire, sort of. Next to a truck that burned. Left side of mine was melted - all the plastic parts dripping onto the pavement like some Dali painting.
All repaired, all working fine again! Got 170000 miles on it; gonna go another.
I'm split on this - some of the new tech in cars is welcome other things are annoying. I do love my Ranger from 1997 - manual everything (I would like power steering from time to time) but that thing is indestructible.
I respect the preference but need to voice just how much value I get from highway-assist tools like lane-assist and apple-carplay for navigation.
It greatly lowers the cognitive load on long drives while balancing the need for driver-engagement and safety.
I think some brands are able to strike the right balance, I have a Subaru with physical buttons providing a tactile mode of control while also getting the benefits of a touch screen (an adaptive UI that can be better for particular apps).
micromobility is on the rise. Electric skateboard is the latest greatest thing ever if you are willing to invest in learning the skills to safely use it.
It's got an even smaller form factor than the scooters and so far I've never found a place that would not allow me to tow it in behind me (did not try flying).
This is possible because most cars have ICEs. An under-discussed aspect of EVs, in my opinion, is the large amount of waste they will produce. The batteries have much shorter lives than an ICE, and are so expensive that I predict entire vehicles will be scrapped long before an equivalent ICE model would be.
> The batteries have much shorter lives than an ICE
At least for Tesla, their batteries live very very long [1]. An ICE car with 500.000km on it would be by that point at the very least on their second engine and 3rd/4th clutch, probably on its second transmission, and god knows how many oil changes and belt replacements.
A classic combustion engine consists of ~1.500 parts, some of which are under immense thermal and mechanical stress, and that's just the engine and engine-associated parts and doesn't include the whole exhaust management system with all its components. In contrast, electric engines are ~200 parts and have way less thermal stress.
That marked difference in complexity is also the reason why classic ICE car dealerships are so furious about the switch to electric cars - there is, crash repairs aside, barely any maintenance and repair but tire, brake and air-condition fluid/filter changes to do on an electric vehicle. No oil changes, no AdBlue refills (at least pre-Dieselgate diesel cars with their cheating system only had AdBlue refills during regular maintenance), no DPF deep-cleaning, no engine rebuilds, no transmission/clutch fixes...
On top of that, the batteries themselves are perfectly fine to re-use in a stationary scenario after their degradation makes them too incapable of using in an EV (=below 60% capacity). Even the first-generation base Model S battery with 60 kWh would still have 36 kWh - more than enough to cover a week worth of an entire household's consumption as a backup battery.
The very aged battery, which works fine for my use, is still worth as much as an entire comparable ICE economy car if I were to remove it and sell it. People use them in other projects where their energy density to cost is still reasonable.
This is the worst-performing and shortest-lived lithium car battery produced in the past decade. All the recent ones are much better.
I don't think is fair. We actually don't have a lot of data on real world battery lifetimes, but a properly engineered system with good heat & charge mgmt can last a decade for sure. There are 2011, 2012 Chevy Volts on the road like this, with minimal degradation, from my understanding.
It is true that some manufacturers (cough cough Nissan) have been slack on the battery longevity front. But Tesla and GM at least put a lot of engineering into temperature and lifecycle mgmt and I expect others are now doing the same
That and I'm sure in the long run, cost effective battery replacement will become entirely feasible in various manufacturer pipelines, once things mature and standardize.
Meanwhile in an EV most other components will have a longer lifetime.
But are they good after 10, 15, or 20 years? A battery will wear out due to time alone. This is somewhat true for cars, but not in the same way. Most people will never drive a million miles, but many people will keep a car for 10-20 years.
$4000 for me meant something totally different 4 years ago, than what it means today.
I used to expect to get a very used, high mileage but repairable and dependable vehicle for that amount with some effort searching.
I can remember buying before internet, you could look at local paper or dealerships but the best hope for a larger pool of searching was phone calls, printed listings, etc. When internet searching really caught on I thought it would open up a larger market and drive prices down with the extra competition. Not sure to what extent that happened but in any event prices have done anything but go down over past 10-15 years, with a massive spike in prices especially past 4 years.
I do wonder if that end of the market is going to disappear. It’s going to be hard justifying spending $10k for a new battery when the car is only worth half that.
Unfortunately all efforts to make the population as a whole see/feel that waste -- in the form of appropriate carbon/fuel taxes and surcharges -- are likely to end in riots or deposed governments.
Does anyone have leads on where to find de-commissioned EV batteries for reuse as local energy storage? I want to hook some in to a renewable energy generation platform.
In general it's an ad-hoc market, but even eBay is fine for this. Lots of older Nissan and Volt cells available for sale. Challenge being shipping. I got a single Gen 1 Volt pack sitting in my shop, waiting for a project, and I got it for a good price off eBay two years ago, from a Canadian supplier so shipping was also domestic and reasonable. Quite handy. 48V, still has most of its capacity. Reasonable form factor to work with.
I predict that second hand business will be made illegal for whatever reasons ever not to endanger an economic potential IF <insert your country> will become serious at producing batteries.
I've posted before about my 35 year old Suburban that's still on the road, still my daily driver. But after so many years of use, it is time to turn it into a part time fun-mobile instead of the grocery getter. It needs a lot of work.
These days I could afford a $500/mo car payment for a few years, but I didn't do that. I am buying a used car for $2500, and it's a 2005. It also needs a little work, but they all do at that age. I just don't see the utility in buying new cars.
That being said, every used car was once somebody's new car.
My first "car" was a 1985 Suburban. It had 200K miles when I bought it, and it had originally been a police vehicle. Pretty sure I paid $1000.
Another fun old car story I like to tell. I moved into a house in the 80s and there was a car parked on the street with a for sale sign. It was an ancient Volvo. The owner came out and showed it to me. It had 950K miles on the odometer. He was asking $50.
Aside from the increase in quality, even basic $30k cars these day drive nicely and ride exceedingly well compared to their ancestors from the 90s and early 2000s.
The incremental improvement that you get by trading in for newer model or even up, just isn't worth the price of admission compared to the past.
Yes, wealth inequality is massive. Most people I know could buy that car in cash without thinking about it.
However, I must say: $30k is not that basic, my $30.5k vehicle came with 11" touchscreen, vision system for adaptive cruise control & lane tracking & progressive enhancement safety features, easy-to-fold backseats for a massive trunk, comfy & durable ride, and great seats.
Pretty sure the real basic cars come in at 15-20k these days.
If you keep up on maintenance and aren't riding around on blown shocks, sagging springs, etc. then 20 plus year old cars ride perfectly fine. I would gladly ride around in a Lexus LS400 or Mercedes S class from 1992 in great condition vs. a brand new Honda Civic.
You don't even have to go as ancient as a 20+ year old car. A 5 year old car will be just as reliable as a new car and cheaper.
I've always owned used cars. It may just be my upbringing, but I was always told only rich people or stupid people who don't know what "depreciation" means buy new cars. I mean, I'm glad there are people out there buying new cars: They're eating the depreciation and supplying the second-hand market.
My only concern with a car that old is crash safety, otherwise I think they're phenominal. Here's for example a 2nd gen LS400 and a new Civic IIHS tests[1]. There's some better photos on the IIHS' website, and actual measurements.[2] Rust can also impact the car's structural integrity and crash worthiness over the years.[3]
Part of me thinking that "cash for clunkers" in 2009 got rid of over 600,000 cars/light trucks. If it wasn't for that, the average age would be even higher?
Readit News
Nowadays a car lasting >200k miles is totally unremarkable.
The proliferation of "lifetime" non-serviceable CVTs and digitally controlled everything will probably result in a lot more premature deaths of vehicles.
For example power steering in older cars was a simple hydraulic mechanical system that could fail gracefully and be troubleshooted with minimal tools. Nowadays steering is electronic drive-by-wire and has many more components like actuators, sensors, etc. that can all fail and stop the entire system.
Why, today's cars come with too much complexity, I do not want automatic anything plus the trend to internet connected cars annoys me to no end.
Also new costs way too much, if my car fails beyond repair, if I cannot find a good alternative I may abandon driving all together and do uber and public transportation when available. Right now for short errands, in the summer, I either walk or bike.
There are some pretty decent newer models that can be used as platforms and made to do those things well, but then you're spending a pile of money anyway.
But I'm sure I'm in a tiny minority on this, and for most people, it's simply a matter of not being able to afford a car payment right now.
No touch-panels, no weird dash controls that do god knows what. Clock that shows the time; thermometer that shows the temp.
Made for folks who want to get there, not figure out how to get there.
It was in a fire, sort of. Next to a truck that burned. Left side of mine was melted - all the plastic parts dripping onto the pavement like some Dali painting.
All repaired, all working fine again! Got 170000 miles on it; gonna go another.
I respect the preference but need to voice just how much value I get from highway-assist tools like lane-assist and apple-carplay for navigation.
It greatly lowers the cognitive load on long drives while balancing the need for driver-engagement and safety.
I think some brands are able to strike the right balance, I have a Subaru with physical buttons providing a tactile mode of control while also getting the benefits of a touch screen (an adaptive UI that can be better for particular apps).
It's got an even smaller form factor than the scooters and so far I've never found a place that would not allow me to tow it in behind me (did not try flying).
At least for Tesla, their batteries live very very long [1]. An ICE car with 500.000km on it would be by that point at the very least on their second engine and 3rd/4th clutch, probably on its second transmission, and god knows how many oil changes and belt replacements.
A classic combustion engine consists of ~1.500 parts, some of which are under immense thermal and mechanical stress, and that's just the engine and engine-associated parts and doesn't include the whole exhaust management system with all its components. In contrast, electric engines are ~200 parts and have way less thermal stress.
That marked difference in complexity is also the reason why classic ICE car dealerships are so furious about the switch to electric cars - there is, crash repairs aside, barely any maintenance and repair but tire, brake and air-condition fluid/filter changes to do on an electric vehicle. No oil changes, no AdBlue refills (at least pre-Dieselgate diesel cars with their cheating system only had AdBlue refills during regular maintenance), no DPF deep-cleaning, no engine rebuilds, no transmission/clutch fixes...
On top of that, the batteries themselves are perfectly fine to re-use in a stationary scenario after their degradation makes them too incapable of using in an EV (=below 60% capacity). Even the first-generation base Model S battery with 60 kWh would still have 36 kWh - more than enough to cover a week worth of an entire household's consumption as a backup battery.
[1] https://electrek.co/2020/06/06/tesla-battery-degradation-rep...
I’ve only had to get tire, windshield wiper, and software changes in 12 years.
The very aged battery, which works fine for my use, is still worth as much as an entire comparable ICE economy car if I were to remove it and sell it. People use them in other projects where their energy density to cost is still reasonable.
This is the worst-performing and shortest-lived lithium car battery produced in the past decade. All the recent ones are much better.
You should examine your assumptions.
Or a better question, how much range was lost as a percentage compared to when it was originally released?
It is true that some manufacturers (cough cough Nissan) have been slack on the battery longevity front. But Tesla and GM at least put a lot of engineering into temperature and lifecycle mgmt and I expect others are now doing the same
That and I'm sure in the long run, cost effective battery replacement will become entirely feasible in various manufacturer pipelines, once things mature and standardize.
Meanwhile in an EV most other components will have a longer lifetime.
That's a easy prediction today with so many early EV models on the road. As the technology matures so will the life-span.
[1] https://www.electrive.com/2020/10/19/tesla-researchers-prese...
If an EV ever gets that cheap, I will be sure to give them a spin. But until then I will take their reliability claims with a grain of salt.
I used to expect to get a very used, high mileage but repairable and dependable vehicle for that amount with some effort searching.
I can remember buying before internet, you could look at local paper or dealerships but the best hope for a larger pool of searching was phone calls, printed listings, etc. When internet searching really caught on I thought it would open up a larger market and drive prices down with the extra competition. Not sure to what extent that happened but in any event prices have done anything but go down over past 10-15 years, with a massive spike in prices especially past 4 years.
Compare and contrast to the prodigious waste and pollution that the petroleum supply chain causes, I think it's a pittance.
Batteries outlive an ICE lead-acid battery by about 5-10x.
And the beauty of EVs is that everything is completely recyclable include, especially the battery.
[0]https://www.fueleconomy.gov/feg/Find.do?action=sbs&id=45101
We have to re-think the environmental impact on what appears to be consumable items.
These days I could afford a $500/mo car payment for a few years, but I didn't do that. I am buying a used car for $2500, and it's a 2005. It also needs a little work, but they all do at that age. I just don't see the utility in buying new cars.
That being said, every used car was once somebody's new car.
Another fun old car story I like to tell. I moved into a house in the 80s and there was a car parked on the street with a for sale sign. It was an ancient Volvo. The owner came out and showed it to me. It had 950K miles on the odometer. He was asking $50.
Was it kept in a garage?
What climate did it live in?
Garage: Not since I've owned it (2014)
Climate: Portland, OR area until 2014, then WA, now the dry air of Nevada. Almost no rust.
The incremental improvement that you get by trading in for newer model or even up, just isn't worth the price of admission compared to the past.
"basic" as in it takes 2 years earning min wage and not spending a dime to afford it
However, I must say: $30k is not that basic, my $30.5k vehicle came with 11" touchscreen, vision system for adaptive cruise control & lane tracking & progressive enhancement safety features, easy-to-fold backseats for a massive trunk, comfy & durable ride, and great seats.
Pretty sure the real basic cars come in at 15-20k these days.
My first new car was 1992 Maxima. It retailed for nearly $20k in 1991, which is $43k in today's money.
It didn't even come with leather, power seat, sunroof, ABS, CD, or automatic climate control. It only had one airbag.
I've always owned used cars. It may just be my upbringing, but I was always told only rich people or stupid people who don't know what "depreciation" means buy new cars. I mean, I'm glad there are people out there buying new cars: They're eating the depreciation and supplying the second-hand market.
[1]https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=pjDYbIFxJrM
[1]https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=iSSEKzv166Q
[2]https://www.iihs.org/ratings/vehicle/lexus/ls-4-door-sedan/1...
[2]https://www.iihs.org/ratings/vehicle/Honda/civic-4-door-seda...
[3]https://www.autoweek.com/news/a1695221/heres-how-rust-affect...
https://archive.ph/DNTsx/62972222ee75d8e11096ec4ae083d37d85b...