Cars are transportation appliances. If they weren’t, the most popular cars wouldn’t be Toyota Highlander or Toyota Camry-style vehicles.
“Drivers cars” are already rarities. Look at yearly sales figures for something like the Mazda Miata. Look at the overall sales numbers for manual transmission vehicles. They are not increasing and non-SUV vehicles are dying out (see Ford and GM).
Cars are an expensive, depreciating liability. That’s why buying a fun car makes no sense from a financial perspective. An SUV is essentially the type of car that is least likely to be unusable for a particular task, which is why (now that the gas mileage is acceptable) it is the most popular form of vehicle.
If I buy a Miata or even a Camry, one trip to the Home Depot can leave me wishing I bought a big, slow-ish SUV.
This is a long-winded way of saying that the majority of the public won’t miss internal combustion engines. Electric cars are quiet and require less maintenance by far. Battery technology and pricing doesn’t have far to go before buying a gas car makes no sense.
There will always be enthusiast cars of some kind, for the foreseeable future, but most people have no business buying them. In my view, any emotional attachment to them has been curated over decades by car advertisements. Sure, feeling some G-forces and the wind in your hair is fun, but I can do that at an amusement park for far less money, too.
Why would people have no business buying them? The cars I like aren't influenced by ads. Simpletons buy their cars based on the auto ads they see. How many times do you go to an amusement park in a year? My 950whp car puts a smile on my face every time I'm in it, which is multiple times per day. I'll take being able to make any commute a riot, that isn't bumper to bumper, which isn't even a thing where I live, over a couple yearly trips to Great America.
“Drivers cars” are already rarities. Look at yearly sales figures for something like the Mazda Miata. Look at the overall sales numbers for manual transmission vehicles. They are not increasing and non-SUV vehicles are dying out (see Ford and GM).
Cars are an expensive, depreciating liability. That’s why buying a fun car makes no sense from a financial perspective. An SUV is essentially the type of car that is least likely to be unusable for a particular task, which is why (now that the gas mileage is acceptable) it is the most popular form of vehicle.
If I buy a Miata or even a Camry, one trip to the Home Depot can leave me wishing I bought a big, slow-ish SUV.
This is a long-winded way of saying that the majority of the public won’t miss internal combustion engines. Electric cars are quiet and require less maintenance by far. Battery technology and pricing doesn’t have far to go before buying a gas car makes no sense.
There will always be enthusiast cars of some kind, for the foreseeable future, but most people have no business buying them. In my view, any emotional attachment to them has been curated over decades by car advertisements. Sure, feeling some G-forces and the wind in your hair is fun, but I can do that at an amusement park for far less money, too.