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Eventually, your car will die. Or the cost of maintenance will exceed the value of the car. At that time, you'll likely consider buying a car to replace it. If

Eventually, your car will die. Or the cost of maintenance will exceed the value of the car. At that time, you'll likely consider buying a car to replace it. If gas prices are high when the time comes for you to replace your car, then you're more likely to take fuel consumption into consideration and buy a hybrid (or EV). The point is not to replace your perfectly fine existing car with a fuel efficient vehicle; the point is that if you're going to buy a car anyway then it makes sense to consider the next 15 years of fuel costs and carbon emissions.

Teknoman117 5y ago
Right. But even the whole "maintenance exceeds the value of your car" thing is a bit murky. Taking a car worth $2k and paying $4k to have the power train replaced with a new one isn’t going to make it worth $6k, sure. But if that means your car will last another 200k miles and you aren’t bothered by driving a vehicle that old, you’re still coming out on top. I think that mostly comes from advice saying "look, if you’re like most other people, you’ll get bored of the car before what you’re replacing fails. So you’re just throwing money into the fire if you sell it in the next few years".
southerntofu 5y ago
> Or the cost of maintenance will exceed the value of the car. How do you measure the value of the used car? In all cases, it's very unlikely that the cost of maintenance will ever exceed the value of a brand new car. If it ever does, it sure is a demonstration of planned obsolescence (voluntary bad engineering to push sales). > If gas prices are high when the time comes for you to replace your car, then you're more likely to take fuel consumption into consideration and buy a hybrid (or EV). Not sure about that. Manufacturing cars, whether electric or gasoline-based, takes considerable amounts of fuel from extraction of materials to assembly to distribution. Higher fuel prices means higher parts prices overall, and the reason we have cheap electronics is because they're manufactured in China where energy is cheap and local governments mostly don't care about pollution. I have yet to see a study comparing the amount of fossil fuel necessary to produce electric vs ignition cars, but in the "renewable" energy world the picture isn't as clear cut as you suggest. As much as i dislike the director, "Planet of the humans" documentary has interesting overview of that topic.
- gruez 5y ago
  >In all cases, it's very unlikely that the cost of maintenance will ever exceed the value of a brand new car. If this is true, why is the average age of cars in the US only around a decade? If it really is more economical to constantly repair old cars, you'd expect the average car age to be in the decades. >If it ever does, it sure is a demonstration of planned obsolescence (voluntary bad engineering to push sales). AFAIK cars have gotten more reliable in the past few decades, not less.
  - rsj_hn 5y ago
    > If this is true, why is the average age of cars in the US only around a decade? Because new cars are being constantly sold and you said "average age of cars" when you really should have said "average years of total use", which is about 20 years and is growing. Not 10 years.
  - southerntofu 5y ago
    > If it really is more economical to constantly repair old cars, you'd expect the average car age to be in the decades. I don't know about the US, but in general there are strong financial and marketing incentives to upgrade to a new car, in the form of government subsidies (to keep the market alive, despite sometimes masquerading as green new deal) and marketing (advertisement, social status considerations). Manufacturers make it almost impossible to order parts for older vehicles, and make sure they keep releasing new models whose parts are slightly incompatible with one another (like smartphone manufacturers do). Cars sold in the last 10 or so years make it impossible to change parts without a manufacturer-approved (or a foreign-language pirate) debugger firmware. Also, modern cars are equipped with tons of electronics who each have their own ways of failing over time. Dozens/hundreds of different chips and processors serving questionable purpose makes your product overall less durable. The era of "my cousin will fix my car given the right part i can order from the store" is long gone. Maybe the original parts from a brand new car are overall more reliable than in the past (i'm sure they're more energy-efficient, but i'm not convinced they're more durable) but the car as a whole is much less durable and the car industry is a very good example of subtle planned obsolescence. Planned obsolescence does not only mean designing a specific part to break over time, see also https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Planned_obsolescence#Variants https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Planned_obsolescence#Variants

Teknoman117 5y ago

Right. But even the whole "maintenance exceeds the value of your car" thing is a bit murky. Taking a car worth $2k and paying $4k to have the power train replaced with a new one isn’t going to make it worth $6k, sure. But if that means your car will last another 200k miles and you aren’t bothered by driving a vehicle that old, you’re still coming out on top. I think that mostly comes from advice saying "look, if you’re like most other people, you’ll get bored of the car before what you’re replacing fails. So you’re just throwing money into the fire if you sell it in the next few years".

southerntofu 5y ago

> Or the cost of maintenance will exceed the value of the car. How do you measure the value of the used car? In all cases, it's very unlikely that the cost of maintenance will ever exceed the value of a brand new car. If it ever does, it sure is a demonstration of planned obsolescence (voluntary bad engineering to push sales). > If gas prices are high when the time comes for you to replace your car, then you're more likely to take fuel consumption into consideration and buy a hybrid (or EV). Not sure about that. Manufacturing cars, whether electric or gasoline-based, takes considerable amounts of fuel from extraction of materials to assembly to distribution. Higher fuel prices means higher parts prices overall, and the reason we have cheap electronics is because they're manufactured in China where energy is cheap and local governments mostly don't care about pollution. I have yet to see a study comparing the amount of fossil fuel necessary to produce electric vs ignition cars, but in the "renewable" energy world the picture isn't as clear cut as you suggest. As much as i dislike the director, "Planet of the humans" documentary has interesting overview of that topic.

gruez 5y ago
>In all cases, it's very unlikely that the cost of maintenance will ever exceed the value of a brand new car. If this is true, why is the average age of cars in the US only around a decade? If it really is more economical to constantly repair old cars, you'd expect the average car age to be in the decades. >If it ever does, it sure is a demonstration of planned obsolescence (voluntary bad engineering to push sales). AFAIK cars have gotten more reliable in the past few decades, not less.
- rsj_hn 5y ago
  > If this is true, why is the average age of cars in the US only around a decade? Because new cars are being constantly sold and you said "average age of cars" when you really should have said "average years of total use", which is about 20 years and is growing. Not 10 years.
- southerntofu 5y ago
  > If it really is more economical to constantly repair old cars, you'd expect the average car age to be in the decades. I don't know about the US, but in general there are strong financial and marketing incentives to upgrade to a new car, in the form of government subsidies (to keep the market alive, despite sometimes masquerading as green new deal) and marketing (advertisement, social status considerations). Manufacturers make it almost impossible to order parts for older vehicles, and make sure they keep releasing new models whose parts are slightly incompatible with one another (like smartphone manufacturers do). Cars sold in the last 10 or so years make it impossible to change parts without a manufacturer-approved (or a foreign-language pirate) debugger firmware. Also, modern cars are equipped with tons of electronics who each have their own ways of failing over time. Dozens/hundreds of different chips and processors serving questionable purpose makes your product overall less durable. The era of "my cousin will fix my car given the right part i can order from the store" is long gone. Maybe the original parts from a brand new car are overall more reliable than in the past (i'm sure they're more energy-efficient, but i'm not convinced they're more durable) but the car as a whole is much less durable and the car industry is a very good example of subtle planned obsolescence. Planned obsolescence does not only mean designing a specific part to break over time, see also https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Planned_obsolescence#Variants https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Planned_obsolescence#Variants