6 ms·

"Why does anyone spend $35,000 - $50,000 on a car? It just feels like a number that is at least 5x too high." If someone makes $250,000+ a year, it's not unrea

"Why does anyone spend $35,000 - $50,000 on a car? It just feels like a number that is at least 5x too high." If someone makes $250,000+ a year, it's not unreasonable. "My 2005 Ford Focus sedan was $3,000 and should last me about 3 years before I need to make a decision about major repairs, so that's less than $100 a month in ammortized costs." That's completely unrealistic. You have some sort of competitive advantage (REALLY know someone trustworthy), or you are delusional. $3000 cars are generally very high mileage, unreliable, in poor condition, etc. Timing belts, suspension components, drive belts, starters, ac compressors, minor electronics, etc tend to start going on these cars. "Are there really hundreds of thousands of people who are making $5,000+ a month necessary to justify the purchase of such an expensive vehicle? I'm not far from that number and most of my money still goes to food and rent." I believe a car should be 3 months income at most. So no, I can't justify anything past a $10,000 car. What I can say for sure is that unless you are a decent mechanic with tools or have GOOD friends / relatives that are, you shouldn't walk around espousing 3k cars. They just cost way too much in time.

deleted 8y ago
[deleted]
ams6110 8y ago
Not at all. You can buy a good, reliable, well maintained car for $3,000. Mileage is less important than maintenance history. The Focus is a particularly good choice IMO. They are reliable, pleasant to drive, and Ford made gazillions of them so you can get them repaired anywhere and parts are cheap. You can also buy a basket case for $3,000, so you do need to have a bit of an idea of what to look for (or what to avoid).
- paulddraper 8y ago
  Please link to this good, reliable, well-maintained car for $3k or under, because (without a family/buddy deal) it does not exist.
  - bfuller 8y ago
    It definitely does, you just have to be willing to spend the hours to look for the deal.
  - cspags 8y ago
    FWIW, I bought a 2004 Corolla with 140k miles off Craigslist in a HCOL city for $3,200 back in June. No issues so far.
  - cheeko1234 8y ago
    As bfuller already said, they do exist. I got my 2005 Honda Accord (Manual) on craigslist (2 days of research) for $2900. It has lasted me 5.5 years now with no maintenance except oil changes.
    - Anderkent 8y ago
      Possible that you got lucky in a lemon market?
    - sangnoir 8y ago
      I've noticed manual transmission cars are usually discounted relative to autos.
  - justtopost 8y ago
    Look for any 1999+ Toyota Carolla/Prism with under 200k. Many camary of that era are bulletproof. Civics all got bought up by ricers, but '3k civic' is literally a meme for being so common.
- newguynewguy 8y ago
  I'm going to be replacing a taurus soon. $3k is my budget. I took highschool auto, but would absolutely not feel comfortable buying a used focus. Where are the resources to learn what I 'need to look out for'?
  - doubt_me 8y ago
    /r/cars | /r/justrolledintotheshop
  - aurailious 8y ago
    Wasn't there a year recently where reliability skyrocketed? 2004 or something? I thought I heard there is a clear cutoff point where you should not consider buying a car before that date.
  - fhood 8y ago
    Mazda Protege5. Best hatchback of the early 2000s. ...if your looking for something fun, reliable, and manual. Otherwise just get a Camry or a Matrix or something like that.
jartelt 8y ago
Seriously - I just sold a 1999 Civic with 150,000 miles for $2,000. The car made so many noises and did not feel safe at all. Yet, someone paid real money for it and was happy about it. Most cheap used cars are pretty junky. That is fine if you want a beater to drive to work and back or if you have mechanic know-how. It's a lot sketchier if you want a car to drive your kids around in or if you want to drive on longer trips where you need reliability.
- ryandrake 8y ago
  As someone who prefers cheap cars, one of the keys is basic maintenance know-how. Anyone can learn to do the basics (oil changes, air filter, spark plugs, brake pads, etc.) with a few hours of learning on YouTube. I'd never waste my money on a new car. My current car is 10 years old and it feels so uncomfortable new. I felt like I was spoiling myself when I bought it.
  - derekp7 8y ago
    That basic maintenance worked for my Dad, he got home from work at 3:00 pm and also had whole weekends for car/house/lawn/garage/hobbies. I work further from home, with a higher paying job, and get home typically around 6:30 pm. Weekends are spent cramming in other household maintenance, recreational activities for the family, etc. So if having that new car (and spending $80 at the dealer every 3 - 4 months for basic maintenance) means having more free time to spend with my family, I feel it is a really good tradeoff.
    - shakestheclown 8y ago
      I think you are overestimating the time costs of an older, reliable car. I've got a 2003 Honda Civic 200k miles that I've had since it had 13k miles. I'd say it goes to the shop overnight once every 12-18 months for a major issue or something I don't want to deal with, goes to Valvoline for 15 minutes every 3 months or so, drop off at tire store for 2 hrs twice a year, and I maintain things like brakes, spark plugs, radiator fan probably twice a year total 2 hours at a time. And for tools, you don't need much more than the very basics for most jobs that I would want to deal with. Now if your car of choice is a 69 chevelle or a Fiero then it's going to be a different story.
close04 8y ago
Also let’s not forget that for one person to buy a 2005 Ford Focus sedan for $3000 today another person had to pay 5+ times more 13 years ago. Having a cheap second hand car available is the result of someone buying an expensive new car. You need the latter to get the former.
esotericn 8y ago
Maybe I'm just an outlier. My cars generally cost about 300-500 quid. If it breaks I buy another one. I can buy 5 or more of them for your quoted 3K. Are they as safe as a Model S? No. Are they substantially more dangerous than other things I do in my life? Probably not. Once things start to break you scrap it and get another one. Done. I bought a Civic for 325 GBP, changed the tyres for ~150, and drove it around half of Europe, putting 10K miles on it before selling it because I moved in to a city for a while. I basically just treat cars as a 'subscription cost' model rather than any form of capital. In the US you have the issue that a car might be a hard requirement to get to work. In that case I'd probably just buy two and drive them on alternate days so there's always a backup. You guys seem to have enough land for this to be viable. Still cheap as chips.
- fhood 8y ago
  I don't know why, but used cars in the UK and Australia are way cheaper than in the US.
- antisthenes 8y ago
  Aren't insurance costs way higher than the amortized cost of the car itself? Especially in the UK? > In the US you have the issue that a car might be a hard requirement to get to work. In that case I'd probably just buy two and drive them on alternate days so there's always a backup. As long as you're not paying almost double insurance, this sounds like a good option. You could even rent the other car out on the C2C rental exchange.
  - ljf 8y ago
    Depends where you are - with 11 years no claims, I paid around £500 a year in London on a Volvo v70 2.4 litre, currently paying £230 a year (out of London) for a huge people carrier that also has my wife as a named driver who has only just learnt to drive. Though yes - insuring 2 cars could be costly - some places offer a multi car discount, some with a device that only charges you when you drive.
  - esotericn 8y ago
    This is the case, yes, but generally insurance companies are aware that you can only drive one car at once and adjust premiums appropriately. That said, in the UK it's hard for me to think of a circumstance in which two cars would be a hard requirement for someone who can't 'afford' a decent car. Here, you probably live in or close to a city. You might not want to cycle in or get a taxi/bus to work every day, but if your car fails you could probably do that whilst getting another one. So the second car is only necessary if you live in the country, which is a minority, it's nowhere near as common as the sort of "live 30 miles outside of work with no train station" stuff that happens in the US. If my car breaks it doesn't really even matter. I use it because it's easier to do big supermarket runs and saves a bit of time here and there; the cost equation works out roughly equivalent to using public transport.
thaeli 8y ago
I'm in a fairly expensive metro area and 10-year-old Priuses are about $3500. Not hard to find, and if a good mechanic does a pre purchase inspection and doesn't find anything major wrong - they are extremely reliable cars even now. Plan to spend another $500 on tires, as with any used car. The only thing most shops can't easily check is the HV battery cells; even if that goes out, again, there are shops that will replace the battery pack for under $1000.
seer 8y ago
I'm not sure how much it varies country to country - I'm in Eastern Europe myself (lower labor costs, higher import / taxes etc) but my trusty toyota corolla was bought for about $3000 with no "friend discounts", just a general recommendation that Japanese cars are reliable and a bit of quick looking around the local car craigslist equivalents. I've been driving it for about 7 years (12 years old in total) with no major repairs whatsoever, only routine maintenance and a couple of bodywork fixes that we can contribute to "user error". And its not that I'm an outlier or anything, most of my friends have stories in the same ballpark. To be honest I even paid a bit too much due to my inexperience, if you're smart and know the right people you could get a better car at close to half the price.
- jjoonathan 8y ago
  > Eastern Europe Geographic variation in pricing not only fully explains the difference but actually leaves me mildly surprised that the difference is so small.
  - PeterisP 8y ago
    Arbitrage exists - the difference can't be that big because if it becomes so, then lots of people just drive used cars across half a continent to resell them. International movement of used cars is a big business, generally from more wealthy countries (where more people buy new cars) to less wealthy ones, but also to cover gaps in the market if there's a disbalance in some sector e.g. a surplus of used vans because of some large company selling them off, or a lack of a particular model that's randomly gotten in fashion somewhere.
SeanAppleby 8y ago
Not quite $3k, but I paid $4500 for a 2012 Chevy Sonic a year ago with a clean title, a bit over 50k miles and no real issues. I brought it to the mechanic once for a check engine light and I had it back by lunch with a trivial fix for like $150, and other than that am just doing normal maintenance. I could buy a Tesla or whatever if I wanted to without it really noticeably effecting my immediate position, but from the perspective of my car being an appliance that does its job, I see no reason to spend more than I did, at least until I can get something that I can go to sleep in and wake up 100s of miles away at a beach or ski resort. There are other ways to incinerate 50k that I'd get more joy out of than buying a car, but even beyond that I'd rather just leave it all in investments to get my capital gains above my expenses as fast as possible. If you had enough in capital gains to buy the car from just those gains, or if you are a person that is really genuinely going to get $50k worth of joy out of it and make enough that the expense won't add any stress then I would start to not be able to argue with it financially, but I think both of those are very few people.
nnforall 8y ago
For many, many years I have had a personal benchmark in mind when purchasing vehicles. I want my TCO to be < $1000/year barring routine costs like fuel, oil, tires. So if I purchase a car for $3000, I expect to own it for 5 years with minimal problems. There is room for a bad alternator or a starter. But not too many of those over that 5 years. Of course, if I can sell it for $1500 after the 5 years, that's another $1500 I can sink into maintenance and still justify that it cost me < $1000/year. If I spend $10K, I have to think the car will be reliable for 15 years with ~$5K of repairs along the way. In the past five years or so I have thought I might need to raise that $1000/year figure to reflect modern practicality. But, surprisingly, I haven't really needed to. Cars are becoming amazingly more durable, and prices in the used car market aren't sky-rocketing the same as in the new car market. Still, it is time to make the transition to electric. The used electric market is still very immature. I don't want a used Prius. I'm ignorant of how to value used batteries, so I'm not sure what the maintenance costs will be on an 8-year-old Honda hybrid with original batteries. A 10-year-old Tesla is still way beyond $1000/year. To step into this brave new world will probably require me to suspend my $1000 rule until the water settles a bit. Or I can pick up one more ICE car and stretch it out for 10 more years while things sort... Or compromise and just get a series of 3-4 year clunkers until I'm ready to dive into electric. Or just bite the bullet and take the plunge now... Or...
- Certhas 8y ago
  It will probably not get you there, but for TCO electric you really should factor in fuel costs. Even if I think the study is somewhat optimistic (and as far as I see it is talking about new cars, not used cars), it's clear that it's a major factor: https://www.theguardian.com/environment/2017/dec/01/electric-cars-already-cheaper-to-own-and-run-than-petrol-or-diesel-study https://www.theguardian.com/environment/2017/dec/01/electric...
adonnjohn 8y ago
3 months net?
QuantumGood 8y ago
I haven't bought a car for more than $2,500 in decades. In Minnesota all those decades, with snow and salt problems. I have had to educate mechanics in person by paying mechanics on the internet to answer questions. I do keep a spare car so I don't have to buy one in a hurry when one is on the way out. Only once bought a car from a family member in that time. But it's pretty well established that near end-of-life cars are cheaper on an annual basis than at other points in their lifespan. I don't know anything about cars myself. Never worked on one. By buying before I need to (mostly) negotiation is easier. I can wait for the right price. My biggest mistake was buying a (probably) repaired-after-crash car for $2,000 and not reselling it soon enough—everything kind of went at once. Best buy was $100 for a non-running car that a mechanic had been puzzled by that needed only $450 to fix, and is still running, five years later. (It did have a windshield crack that was hit by a tree branch before I could pay to get it repaired, so additional luck there—insurance covered the branch situation, but not the pre-existing crack). All this said, I'm considering buying a new Model 3.
deleted 8y ago
[deleted]
beiller 8y ago
Here is an anecdote for you. I bought a 2009 pontiac g5 in 2010 for $10k cash used. The car had 30k km on it, and was still under warranty (100km drivetrain warranty). So why would people spend $50k? And how to justify such a high price, while at the same time saying they are simpler and require less maintenance. Yes I believe that is true, so shouldn't they be considerably cheaper to build?

deleted 8y ago

[deleted]

ams6110 8y ago

Not at all. You can buy a good, reliable, well maintained car for $3,000. Mileage is less important than maintenance history. The Focus is a particularly good choice IMO. They are reliable, pleasant to drive, and Ford made gazillions of them so you can get them repaired anywhere and parts are cheap. You can also buy a basket case for $3,000, so you do need to have a bit of an idea of what to look for (or what to avoid).

paulddraper 8y ago
Please link to this good, reliable, well-maintained car for $3k or under, because (without a family/buddy deal) it does not exist.
- bfuller 8y ago
  It definitely does, you just have to be willing to spend the hours to look for the deal.
- cspags 8y ago
  FWIW, I bought a 2004 Corolla with 140k miles off Craigslist in a HCOL city for $3,200 back in June. No issues so far.
- cheeko1234 8y ago
  As bfuller already said, they do exist. I got my 2005 Honda Accord (Manual) on craigslist (2 days of research) for $2900. It has lasted me 5.5 years now with no maintenance except oil changes.
  - Anderkent 8y ago
    Possible that you got lucky in a lemon market?
  - sangnoir 8y ago
    I've noticed manual transmission cars are usually discounted relative to autos.
- justtopost 8y ago
  Look for any 1999+ Toyota Carolla/Prism with under 200k. Many camary of that era are bulletproof. Civics all got bought up by ricers, but '3k civic' is literally a meme for being so common.
newguynewguy 8y ago
I'm going to be replacing a taurus soon. $3k is my budget. I took highschool auto, but would absolutely not feel comfortable buying a used focus. Where are the resources to learn what I 'need to look out for'?
- doubt_me 8y ago
  /r/cars | /r/justrolledintotheshop
- aurailious 8y ago
  Wasn't there a year recently where reliability skyrocketed? 2004 or something? I thought I heard there is a clear cutoff point where you should not consider buying a car before that date.
- fhood 8y ago
  Mazda Protege5. Best hatchback of the early 2000s. ...if your looking for something fun, reliable, and manual. Otherwise just get a Camry or a Matrix or something like that.

jartelt 8y ago

Seriously - I just sold a 1999 Civic with 150,000 miles for $2,000. The car made so many noises and did not feel safe at all. Yet, someone paid real money for it and was happy about it. Most cheap used cars are pretty junky. That is fine if you want a beater to drive to work and back or if you have mechanic know-how. It's a lot sketchier if you want a car to drive your kids around in or if you want to drive on longer trips where you need reliability.

ryandrake 8y ago
As someone who prefers cheap cars, one of the keys is basic maintenance know-how. Anyone can learn to do the basics (oil changes, air filter, spark plugs, brake pads, etc.) with a few hours of learning on YouTube. I'd never waste my money on a new car. My current car is 10 years old and it feels so uncomfortable new. I felt like I was spoiling myself when I bought it.
- derekp7 8y ago
  That basic maintenance worked for my Dad, he got home from work at 3:00 pm and also had whole weekends for car/house/lawn/garage/hobbies. I work further from home, with a higher paying job, and get home typically around 6:30 pm. Weekends are spent cramming in other household maintenance, recreational activities for the family, etc. So if having that new car (and spending $80 at the dealer every 3 - 4 months for basic maintenance) means having more free time to spend with my family, I feel it is a really good tradeoff.
  - shakestheclown 8y ago
    I think you are overestimating the time costs of an older, reliable car. I've got a 2003 Honda Civic 200k miles that I've had since it had 13k miles. I'd say it goes to the shop overnight once every 12-18 months for a major issue or something I don't want to deal with, goes to Valvoline for 15 minutes every 3 months or so, drop off at tire store for 2 hrs twice a year, and I maintain things like brakes, spark plugs, radiator fan probably twice a year total 2 hours at a time. And for tools, you don't need much more than the very basics for most jobs that I would want to deal with. Now if your car of choice is a 69 chevelle or a Fiero then it's going to be a different story.

close04 8y ago

Also let’s not forget that for one person to buy a 2005 Ford Focus sedan for $3000 today another person had to pay 5+ times more 13 years ago. Having a cheap second hand car available is the result of someone buying an expensive new car. You need the latter to get the former.

esotericn 8y ago

Maybe I'm just an outlier. My cars generally cost about 300-500 quid. If it breaks I buy another one. I can buy 5 or more of them for your quoted 3K. Are they as safe as a Model S? No. Are they substantially more dangerous than other things I do in my life? Probably not. Once things start to break you scrap it and get another one. Done. I bought a Civic for 325 GBP, changed the tyres for ~150, and drove it around half of Europe, putting 10K miles on it before selling it because I moved in to a city for a while. I basically just treat cars as a 'subscription cost' model rather than any form of capital. In the US you have the issue that a car might be a hard requirement to get to work. In that case I'd probably just buy two and drive them on alternate days so there's always a backup. You guys seem to have enough land for this to be viable. Still cheap as chips.

fhood 8y ago
I don't know why, but used cars in the UK and Australia are way cheaper than in the US.
antisthenes 8y ago
Aren't insurance costs way higher than the amortized cost of the car itself? Especially in the UK? > In the US you have the issue that a car might be a hard requirement to get to work. In that case I'd probably just buy two and drive them on alternate days so there's always a backup. As long as you're not paying almost double insurance, this sounds like a good option. You could even rent the other car out on the C2C rental exchange.
- ljf 8y ago
  Depends where you are - with 11 years no claims, I paid around £500 a year in London on a Volvo v70 2.4 litre, currently paying £230 a year (out of London) for a huge people carrier that also has my wife as a named driver who has only just learnt to drive. Though yes - insuring 2 cars could be costly - some places offer a multi car discount, some with a device that only charges you when you drive.
- esotericn 8y ago
  This is the case, yes, but generally insurance companies are aware that you can only drive one car at once and adjust premiums appropriately. That said, in the UK it's hard for me to think of a circumstance in which two cars would be a hard requirement for someone who can't 'afford' a decent car. Here, you probably live in or close to a city. You might not want to cycle in or get a taxi/bus to work every day, but if your car fails you could probably do that whilst getting another one. So the second car is only necessary if you live in the country, which is a minority, it's nowhere near as common as the sort of "live 30 miles outside of work with no train station" stuff that happens in the US. If my car breaks it doesn't really even matter. I use it because it's easier to do big supermarket runs and saves a bit of time here and there; the cost equation works out roughly equivalent to using public transport.

thaeli 8y ago

I'm in a fairly expensive metro area and 10-year-old Priuses are about $3500. Not hard to find, and if a good mechanic does a pre purchase inspection and doesn't find anything major wrong - they are extremely reliable cars even now. Plan to spend another $500 on tires, as with any used car. The only thing most shops can't easily check is the HV battery cells; even if that goes out, again, there are shops that will replace the battery pack for under $1000.

seer 8y ago

I'm not sure how much it varies country to country - I'm in Eastern Europe myself (lower labor costs, higher import / taxes etc) but my trusty toyota corolla was bought for about $3000 with no "friend discounts", just a general recommendation that Japanese cars are reliable and a bit of quick looking around the local car craigslist equivalents. I've been driving it for about 7 years (12 years old in total) with no major repairs whatsoever, only routine maintenance and a couple of bodywork fixes that we can contribute to "user error". And its not that I'm an outlier or anything, most of my friends have stories in the same ballpark. To be honest I even paid a bit too much due to my inexperience, if you're smart and know the right people you could get a better car at close to half the price.

jjoonathan 8y ago
> Eastern Europe Geographic variation in pricing not only fully explains the difference but actually leaves me mildly surprised that the difference is so small.
- PeterisP 8y ago
  Arbitrage exists - the difference can't be that big because if it becomes so, then lots of people just drive used cars across half a continent to resell them. International movement of used cars is a big business, generally from more wealthy countries (where more people buy new cars) to less wealthy ones, but also to cover gaps in the market if there's a disbalance in some sector e.g. a surplus of used vans because of some large company selling them off, or a lack of a particular model that's randomly gotten in fashion somewhere.

SeanAppleby 8y ago

Not quite $3k, but I paid $4500 for a 2012 Chevy Sonic a year ago with a clean title, a bit over 50k miles and no real issues. I brought it to the mechanic once for a check engine light and I had it back by lunch with a trivial fix for like $150, and other than that am just doing normal maintenance. I could buy a Tesla or whatever if I wanted to without it really noticeably effecting my immediate position, but from the perspective of my car being an appliance that does its job, I see no reason to spend more than I did, at least until I can get something that I can go to sleep in and wake up 100s of miles away at a beach or ski resort. There are other ways to incinerate 50k that I'd get more joy out of than buying a car, but even beyond that I'd rather just leave it all in investments to get my capital gains above my expenses as fast as possible. If you had enough in capital gains to buy the car from just those gains, or if you are a person that is really genuinely going to get $50k worth of joy out of it and make enough that the expense won't add any stress then I would start to not be able to argue with it financially, but I think both of those are very few people.

nnforall 8y ago

For many, many years I have had a personal benchmark in mind when purchasing vehicles. I want my TCO to be < $1000/year barring routine costs like fuel, oil, tires. So if I purchase a car for $3000, I expect to own it for 5 years with minimal problems. There is room for a bad alternator or a starter. But not too many of those over that 5 years. Of course, if I can sell it for $1500 after the 5 years, that's another $1500 I can sink into maintenance and still justify that it cost me < $1000/year. If I spend $10K, I have to think the car will be reliable for 15 years with ~$5K of repairs along the way. In the past five years or so I have thought I might need to raise that $1000/year figure to reflect modern practicality. But, surprisingly, I haven't really needed to. Cars are becoming amazingly more durable, and prices in the used car market aren't sky-rocketing the same as in the new car market. Still, it is time to make the transition to electric. The used electric market is still very immature. I don't want a used Prius. I'm ignorant of how to value used batteries, so I'm not sure what the maintenance costs will be on an 8-year-old Honda hybrid with original batteries. A 10-year-old Tesla is still way beyond $1000/year. To step into this brave new world will probably require me to suspend my $1000 rule until the water settles a bit. Or I can pick up one more ICE car and stretch it out for 10 more years while things sort... Or compromise and just get a series of 3-4 year clunkers until I'm ready to dive into electric. Or just bite the bullet and take the plunge now... Or...

Certhas 8y ago
It will probably not get you there, but for TCO electric you really should factor in fuel costs. Even if I think the study is somewhat optimistic (and as far as I see it is talking about new cars, not used cars), it's clear that it's a major factor: https://www.theguardian.com/environment/2017/dec/01/electric-cars-already-cheaper-to-own-and-run-than-petrol-or-diesel-study https://www.theguardian.com/environment/2017/dec/01/electric...

adonnjohn 8y ago

3 months net?

QuantumGood 8y ago

I haven't bought a car for more than $2,500 in decades. In Minnesota all those decades, with snow and salt problems. I have had to educate mechanics in person by paying mechanics on the internet to answer questions. I do keep a spare car so I don't have to buy one in a hurry when one is on the way out. Only once bought a car from a family member in that time. But it's pretty well established that near end-of-life cars are cheaper on an annual basis than at other points in their lifespan. I don't know anything about cars myself. Never worked on one. By buying before I need to (mostly) negotiation is easier. I can wait for the right price. My biggest mistake was buying a (probably) repaired-after-crash car for $2,000 and not reselling it soon enough—everything kind of went at once. Best buy was $100 for a non-running car that a mechanic had been puzzled by that needed only $450 to fix, and is still running, five years later. (It did have a windshield crack that was hit by a tree branch before I could pay to get it repaired, so additional luck there—insurance covered the branch situation, but not the pre-existing crack). All this said, I'm considering buying a new Model 3.

deleted 8y ago

[deleted]

beiller 8y ago

Here is an anecdote for you. I bought a 2009 pontiac g5 in 2010 for $10k cash used. The car had 30k km on it, and was still under warranty (100km drivetrain warranty). So why would people spend $50k? And how to justify such a high price, while at the same time saying they are simpler and require less maintenance. Yes I believe that is true, so shouldn't they be considerably cheaper to build?