3 ms·

| car reliability and choice have improved so much Citation needed. I've worked on my cars a lot and this is not borne out by my experience. Edit: I feel we c

| car reliability and choice have improved so much Citation needed. I've worked on my cars a lot and this is not borne out by my experience. Edit: I feel we can leave EVs out of this discussion until they're in at least 50% of households' driveways.

everdrive 7y ago
Fair to leave EVs out. I probably wasn't specific enough, either. When I was a kid in the early 90s, a car making it to 100k was still considered a (possibly then outdated) achievement, whereas in the last 15 years, a car making it gracefully to 100k miles is simply expected. - It's possible that I'm old enough such that this point no longer seems novel. - I'll also concede that despite this, there are plenty of cars which aren't reliable which people buy. If I'd clarified better, I might have said that even if there are plenty of unreliable cars these days, consumers have a large pool of reliable cars to choose from. Cost, I hope is more self-evident. Consumers today have a absolutely amazing choice of quality, reliable cars (Fiesta, Fit, Versa, Yaris, Rio, Accent, etc) in the range of $15k. - A fair counterpoint would be that the median price of cars is actually quite high: ~$30k. - Like before, I should have been more specific said that consumers have really great low-cost options, rather than that "cars are [broadly] cheap these days.
- defterGoose 7y ago
  Yeah, there are definitely more entry level models now, but I feel like that hasn't really brought prices down that much taking inflation into account. Another issue not mentioned is that new cars have grown in complexity (electronics) immensely and have therefore become less easy for one to repair and less reliable at the same time. Anecdotally, a friend of mine had an early '10s Fiesta that was a total lemon (transmission issues were widespread with these).

3 ms·

| car reliability and choice have improved so much Citation needed. I've worked on my cars a lot and this is not borne out by my experience. Edit: I feel we c

by defterGoose 7y ago

everdrive 7y ago
Fair to leave EVs out. I probably wasn't specific enough, either. When I was a kid in the early 90s, a car making it to 100k was still considered a (possibly then outdated) achievement, whereas in the last 15 years, a car making it gracefully to 100k miles is simply expected. - It's possible that I'm old enough such that this point no longer seems novel. - I'll also concede that despite this, there are plenty of cars which aren't reliable which people buy. If I'd clarified better, I might have said that even if there are plenty of unreliable cars these days, consumers have a large pool of reliable cars to choose from. Cost, I hope is more self-evident. Consumers today have a absolutely amazing choice of quality, reliable cars (Fiesta, Fit, Versa, Yaris, Rio, Accent, etc) in the range of $15k. - A fair counterpoint would be that the median price of cars is actually quite high: ~$30k. - Like before, I should have been more specific said that consumers have really great low-cost options, rather than that "cars are [broadly] cheap these days.
- defterGoose 7y ago
  Yeah, there are definitely more entry level models now, but I feel like that hasn't really brought prices down that much taking inflation into account. Another issue not mentioned is that new cars have grown in complexity (electronics) immensely and have therefore become less easy for one to repair and less reliable at the same time. Anecdotally, a friend of mine had an early '10s Fiesta that was a total lemon (transmission issues were widespread with these).