The rich have been flogging this idea since cash for clunkers. That, because they run through cars like shit through a goose, you will too.
Speaking as a master diesel mechanic, this is a deleterious line of thinking for anyone with less than a few million dollars. Every car has 20 years of parts, and most Japanese cars have closer into 50 years of parts. Any engine built after 2010 will likely last half a million miles or more as a feature of quality control and automation alone.
Maintaining a well running vehicle long term with a local mechanic is always cheaper than buying a new car every 5 years, and just because insurance says its "totaled" doesn't mean it isnt fixable and safe to drive.
At least in my area, the problem is labor costs. If you can do things yourself, it's great. If you need a mechanic to do it, you're looking at a big expense, because mechanic labor is expensive and there's a lot more covers and harder to get to parts these days. 'Maintenance free' transmissions are very common in newer cars, and they do tend to need less maintenance, but when they do, there's often not a great way to access them. Etc.
> 'Maintenance free' transmissions are very common in newer cars
I take advantage to your comment to write this PSA (that probably you already know):
All transmissions require maintenance, and even manual ones. Those automatic tagged as 'maintenance free' from the brand aren't, and if you call the manufacturer of that transmission, Getrag, ZF, or whatever it is, they should say which ATF and filters it needs and in what interval.
If you do maintenance with an independent technician (not a dealership or a "Jiffy Lube") with some good reputation, they probably help with that
How does find a phone number for General Motors that lets someone talk to the person who knows these details and is both willing and able to relay them?
[insert rant here about BMW's "lifetime" fluid in the 4L30E that they used in E36s]
I'm not a mechanic, but they can see the brand and model on the part and call the manufacture or just google it. If it's the same as the car's brand, or if they don't give any information, you can check forums to get that information, otherwise sometimes they can find this information in their AutoData service.
Checking that state of the fluid isn't difficult, as is bright red when it's new, and turns more and more brown when it's used, and it's mostly used normally between 50k and 100l AFAIK.
Buying the required fluid, and filter if needed, is as easy as looking it in the internet or going your local AutoZone, O'Reillys, AAP, or whatever you have near btw
> Checking that state of the fluid isn't difficult, as is bright red when it's new, and turns more and more brown when it's used, and it's mostly used normally between 50k and 100l AFAIK.
Yeah, but getting to the fluid to see it is hard. They stopped putting in dipsticks, so hopefully there's a check plug somewhere you can get to.
Some fluids are proprietary, like Nissan’s earlier CVT oil which probably costs more than printer ink. Using some near-beer brand often resulted transmission failure.
If its much more than 100 bucks, I'd be pretty surprised, honestly. A quick google shows most Nissan CVT fluids (even the OEM "unicorn tears") at ~80 dollars for the usual 5 quarts etc. Virtually all the "proprietary" fluids are just rebranded mainstream brands (castrol/Valvoline etc etc), most car OEMs are not in the business of manufacturing their raw fluids themselves.
Is the check plug really even necessary for a trans fluid swap a lot of the time?
I just drain mines and refill to specified amount, I've never once cared for a check plug and just change it every ~50k miles on most of my cars, regardless of color. It's usually not an expensive fluid.
On most cars you simply fill till it starts leaking out of the fill hole - like changing oil, it normally doesn't require a precision fill, just close enough.
1. The drain hole is below the fill hole - open drain hole and empty using good old fashioned gravity.
2. Close drain hole.
3. Open fill hole.
4. Fill till it starts leaking out the fill hole.
5. Close the fill hole.
Not especially complex most of the time! Transmission fluid does not really shrink much over time, its a sealed system and it doesn't burn off the way engine oil can. Just doing it at regular intervals like 50k miles is absolutely fine on a lot of cars. If you really do care about hitting some specific quantity of fluid - you know exactly how much you are pouring into the fill hole, you can even measure exactly what came out the drain hole, but this probably is not remotely necessary.
On the E36, which has no prescribed transmission service interval or dip stick, there are two transmission sumps -- and only one of them has a drain plug. Replacing the fluid means pulling one sump off completely...and pre-filling it prior to reinstallation.
On the Honda, which has a regular interval for transmission fluids and a dip stick, the fill plug is on top of the transmission. It would be a bad thing to fill it to that level. (I just refill using the dip stick tube.)
Also, I'd like to add that I am envious of the fact that you have never experienced a leak in any automatic transmission.
The my front left indicator light went on my BMW i3. Tried looking up the specs for the bulb to buy a new one. Of course it wasn't that simple. Oh boy was I naive.
No, it required a whole new headlight assembly, $800 plus labor.
Funnily enough, the car got totalled shortly after, before I had decided to go ahead with the repair. Someone hit my SO as she was in a roundabout, and the impact moved the car several meters. Cracked the carbon fiber chassis. Estimated repair cost was 1.5x price of a new car.
So, never got the pleasure of finding out how much labor would have been for replacing the headlight unit. I'm assuming it would have been a lot more than for replacing a light bulb...
Similar thing happened to me on my GTI, the Xenon bulb replacements weren’t too expensive but replacing it literally required disassembling a large portion of the front end of the car. I couldn’t believe it.
I have been quoted 500$ to fix a stuck gascap cover, because apparently the spring is inside and attached to the rear body panel, and would require a major part replacement.
Although im starting to suspect my mechanic is taking me for a ride
I have a 2018 Subaru Outback. I got in a fender bender that caused the right front headlight unit to snap near the top bolt where it attached to the car. I found out when my car failed inspection.
I called the dealership and they quoted me $500 just for the headlamp. I went on rock auto and bought one for $250 and installed it. I had to take the front bumper off the car to install the headlamp. Passed inspection after I installed it though so it was all good. Just can’t believe they were marking up parts like that.
My neighbor has BMW z3. He has same story about its lights, which fail more than you'd expect.
Also: It's a hard top convertible. The mechanicism stopped fully opening or closing. Bummer. Two repair shops gave ridiculous quotes to troubleshoot and repair.
Using a scanner (generic OBD II scanner with BMW's specific codes), we narrowed the search. The ultimate fix was just two $15 switches. Being noobs, it took us some effort to detach and reattach the hard top.
I don't mind the labor effort (costs). It is a BMW after all. But it's ridiculous that these cars can't report their failing electronic bits.
Damn, crash tests should include repair costs for many types of minor accidents. Maybe we will see two piece rear bumpers and sacrificial headlight lenses.
On my ford it's three bolts and two cables and you can take the headlight unit out, 5 minutes work tops. And that's with LED lights which should never be replaced (by the owner as they always need calibration).
On my previous one it was even easier to let them stay in and move your hand in an awkward position to get the job done.
Where I live a bad year costs $2000 in maintenance costs and usually it is less. Investing the cost of a new car in SPY would give the same amount every year, compounding and virtually tax free*
* You control when you sell and pay tax, sell in small amounts when not working to minimize tax, compounding gains are not taxed until sale, death allows tax free passing to children.
It was once typical for commonly occurring repair problems (replacing accessories like alternators and starters) that the labor costs pretty much equaled to the cost of parts. It was different for critical things like engines and transmissions but I think for a long time losing an engineer or transmission totaled the car.
It would be nice if I could "work with" a mechanic. Pay 1/4 the labor cost and she guides me (I also rent tools and shop time from her so it's more like 1/2).
> Any engine built after 2010 will likely last half a million miles or more as a feature of quality control and automation alone.
The engine block and rotating assembly might. But all the crap that is bolted on won't.
Several engines are known for having the turbocharger fail. Which is now integrated in the exhaust manifold.
Timing components are junkier and junkier these days. And somewhere in the 2000's, some of the manufacturers decided to make complicated systems where cylinders deactivate to allow for fuel savings, and those are all an unreliable mess.
I agree, never entered my mind the Toyota Hybrids. Are they popular in Europe? Somehow when I read this article I'm reminded of high pressure direct fuel injection and biodegradable/sustainable/recycled material... things that just don't last. Toyota tried to get around the carbon build up caused by high pressure direct fuel by having 2 sets of fuel injectors so the older style can clean the new style.. but now you have 2 sets of injectors that can fail instead of 1
It's usually not the engine that fails. The transmission is far more likely to be the weak point, and after that it is rust destroying the body or frame.
The average age of a car is like 13 years old. Most people are definitely not buying new ones every 5 years.
I agree, a transmission is really only good for around 200k miles. However, you can buy a used transmission in most cases for under 3 grand, and again labor for this thanks to automation is likely less than $500.
The real blocker I dont mention is time. Your shop will need that car for a few days and shipping will take time too. At some point the wait isnt worth it anymore. The upside is, 2 used Toyotas are still cheaper than a new one new Toyota
That and you're not getting another 200k miles out of that used transmission.
The other thing that people don't talk about as much is the parts market got seriously messed up during COVID and still hasn't fully recovered. It's more common now for repair parts to either be unavailable or enormously marked up. Like a particular repair might only take a few hours and what should be a few hundred bucks in parts, but the car gets totaled because one of the parts is unavailable or inexplicably costs thousands and the shop doesn't want the liability of hacking together an alternative solution. Especially if the missing part is an ECM or sensor or something else that might make the car fail an inspection.
There is probably no transmission in a US road car that can be replaced for $500 in labor at an auto shop. Your buddy or some rando may do it, but no shop will for that price. Typical shop rate is $120-$220/hour. Most shops are going to charge a minimum of 4 hours, but probably closer to 8 hours. Have you ever been under a car? The amount of "automation" required to replace a transmission is still in the arena of science fiction.
I have personally replaced a Volkswagen transmission in under an hour. I did it alone, in a driveway, with a regular floor jack, a skateboard, and a set of harbor freight wrenches.
The entire comment seems off. They said thanks to automation labor will be $500. What automation is there in replacing a used transmission in a garage on an oily rusty 200k mile car on a lift.
We're still a long ways from that level of automation, but pitpro automation is picking up after robotire had to file for chapter 11, and is working on automating the tire swap end of things.
> and again labor for this thanks to automation is likely less than $500.
What "automation" innovations have lowered the cost of unbolting a heavy transmission out the back of an engine and attaching a new one??
As best I can tell, the process has been unchanged in a workshop for nigh on 40 to 50 years at this point - it's humans with wrenches and a car lift. I want to see this shop that will swap me a trans for under 500 bucks too...
I think you have those switched... a used transmission is probably about $300, and 3 grand to install it.
On most cars the transmission is probably the biggest failure liability- I pretty much only drive manuals for that reason, doing a clutch is a lot cheaper than replacing an automatic, and the better you are at driving it the less you need to do it.
A transmission rebuild refreshes consumables like bronze bearings and seals, damaged pinions are replaced, and the rest are machined back to precision spec. This is cheaper than a used transmission. I paid less than a thousand for this service, when the quality used goes for $4k.
If you look at light vehicle sales in the US they've been stuck at 17 million units a year for the last 25. I think that's why manufacturers keep retching up the size and cost of cars.
I keep seeing manufacturers spam in my engineering newsletters that point towards batteries that last 500,000 to maybe a million miles. And I know that electric motors can go that far. Potentially talking about cars that last 40-50 years.
You can imagine that makes the investor class unhappy, cause maybe the number of cars sold will drop.
ICE engines today can got 500k miles - most cars don't last that long though because other things go first. My wife's car runs great at 220k miles, but we want to replace it because of all the little things that are broken - things that are completely unrelated to the engine and would fail just as likely on a EV.
> just because insurance says its "totaled" doesn't mean it isnt fixable and safe to drive.
"Totaled" to an insurance company means they think the cost of repair at their contracted rates is more than the cost of paying out the "value" of the car. It is a business assessment, not an assessment of the vehicle.
I think you’re right but I think (at least in my own experience) that what gets people to buy a new(er) car is that that people don’t like driving cars that have broken things (windows, switches, lights etc.) that make no sense to fix (say $1500, to fix something non-essential on a car that’s only worth $10k)
That's definitely a case where being a little handy pays off- most of the little things that break on an older car can be fixed for free in a few minutes if you follow a youtube video or forum instructions, but a shop has to charge a lot. Usually it is a common problem, and there will be a known "trick" that fixes it simply. A shop is not going to re-solder a cracked relay or get a used plastic trim for $1 at a junkyard, they're going to replace the entire system with new parts from the manufacturer, at massive expense.
It's really important to have some "pride of ownership" in an older car, and fix anything that isn't perfect immediately- so they don't build up over time and make you feel like the whole vehicle isn't nice to use or own anymore.
Again, some things aren't worth fixing, and they build up. The fabric on my headliner detached. Quickly went from "foam slightly exposed" to "sagging across the width of the backseat". Car is worth less than 5 grand, would be almost 1 to fix. It's a good thing I didn't, because brake troubles cost about as much and were necessary to fix.
I think a lot of waste goes into maintaining cars cosmetically.
No, they are paying $500/month for 6 years. The people who buy new cars (or often lease) are getting rid of them after 3 years - long before those small things are breaking. Those cars go to used car buyers who drive them for 6-10 years, and they eventually decide $500/month is worth getting something newer that doesn't have all those small annoyances, while the car goes on to someone poor who will live with anything that gets them around cheap.
Older cars are massively undervalued in the USA because of social norms, which is a massive opportunity to anyone willing to exploit it to get reliable transportation for nearly free. People are afraid that older cars are dangerous, unreliable, or (worst of all) will make you look poor, but all 3 are just misinformation.
Boats and airplanes are just as reliable when old as new because they're maintained well- and cars are the same. If you maintain an old car well, it doesn't really ever wear out, and stays as reliable as a new car.
It's also massively cheaper to maintain an old car well then to buy new ones even if you pay someone else to do it. People complain when they get a $1000 repair bill every few years for an older car so they will say "it's getting unreliable" and then consider paying up to $1000 a month for a new one. There is a middle ground where you pay maybe $1000-2000 every year to stay on top of stuff, and it stays reliable indefinitely.
Moreover, an older high end car is just so much nicer than a new car in the same price range. You can buy a well maintained low mileage older but high end Porsche, Audi, etc. for well under $10k on Craigslist these days and you'd have to be a car nerd to know it's not a new model. Is it cheap to maintain well? Not exactly, but it will be 1/10th the cost of a car payment on a new low end economy car, and you're driving a high end car. Plus, when you buy a 20 year old high end car and maintain it well, it will appreciate rather than depreciate in value. My daily driver is an older Porsche, and in 3 years of driving it, it has probably appreciated in value enough to make all of the maintenance, insurance, etc. free- basically a free car if you don't count the space in my garage it uses to keep it nice.
I love older cars, but they are significantly more dangerous. My 93 pickup had no airbags and was notorious for the engine intruding into the passenger compartment in collisions. My 91 sports car only has an air bag for the driver as a premium option, and they are known to not deploy due to the ancient explosives and electrical contacts. The A pillars on both cars are tiny and will fold in any kind of hit or rollover, plus both cars were designed for 55 mph max speeds, not the 85+ that is common today. An accident on the freeway in either would be a coin toss of survival.
It depends on how old and what you are comparing. In another thread on here I suggested comparing a brand new Chevy Trax to a 2012 Audi Q5- I think it's pretty safe to say the Audi will be a much safer car for 1/4 the price.
If safety is important, someone with cheap new economy car money can instead get into a high end vehicle well known for its safety and quality, still for a lot less money.
Sure, if you are going to compare something over 30+ years old, and from a manufacturer not known for safety or quality in the first place, it will be a lot more dangerous.
Still, even with old stuff it varies. Late 80s Mercedes and Volvos, even base models, for example had most of the modern safety tech that other cars didn't see for a very long time.
Weight is also a huge factor- a big old truck with no regard for safety in its design is still a lot safer than a light economy car in a collision. Probably the safest cars on the market are still the over-engineered 20 year old full sized luxury SUVs that weigh as much as a 3/4 ton truck and have tons of heavy offroad gadgets they don't put on SUVs anymore.
I have an oldish (1997) exotic car as a toy. It cost less upfront than a new Toyota Camry. At a car meet, I overheard someone say to their friend "Man, if I had infinite money, this is what I'd get". I definitely do not own a money printing machine.
Maintenance is something else but I do the work myself so it's not bad. And the fun thing about old low volume exotics is that they are mostly parts bin cars. Tons of shared components are easily available.
Same, I'm the "rich guy" picking up my son at school in an old Porsche I got cheap on Craigslist and maintain myself, despite the fact that its a school my kid was transferred to in a wealthy neighborhood we can't afford to live in. It cost me way way less than a newer economy car would.
It's funny the general reactions I get- young men try to race me at stoplights, and strangers on the street will often give me a defiant fist or middle finger, as if I represent the wealthy exploitative class, in what is likely the cheapest car that has driven by in half an hour.
I enjoy working on cars, so that helps make it cheap.
I got a lovely note left on my car for parking in a handicap spot (with a tag!). The person assumed I was a rich guy flaunting the rules. My little miata was so proud of being called a "rich man's" car it practically pranced out of the parking lot.
People just assume that anything sporty looking is ruinously expensive.
The street race invitations are funny. I get that a lot in my Esprit and, apart from it being incredibly stupid and dangerous, new cars are so absurdly fast in a straight line that everyone knows who would win.
It was uncomfortable at first having people oogle over the car and make assumptions, but the number of conversations it has started with people genuinely interested in it definitely outweighs the awkwardness.
There is no such thing as owning an "older car" here in the midwest rust belt states. The frames corrode to orange dust on _every_ car when they get to be between 10-12 years old. You _do_ see cars older than that on the road, but that's only because we don't have mandatory inspections in my state.
The only exceptions here are the "toys" that people buy for summer use only. (Sports cars, vintage cars, etc.)
Once in a while I see repair videos on cars from mechanics in Florida, Texas, Arizona, or Southern California. The car will be 15 years old and everything underneath will look entirely brand-new (minus some dust and scratches) compared to a brand-new car here that has seen only a winter or two.
As someone that loves old cars that sounds terrible.
Are you sure every car? Some of the higher end European cars have a hot dipped galvanized frame. Volvo advertised pretty heavily that the 1980s 740s were galvanized… I’m pretty sure I’ve seen some that ended up out here on the west coast from the midwest and you can’t undo a suspension bolt, but the chassis was fine.
You could always buy a used car out of state and drive it back.
I haven't seen a hot-dipped galvanized frame here myself, but I would certainly be an interested buyer if any are still be made.
The only cars with aluminum frames are luxury/sports cars, and the Honda Insight from like 20 years ago. Some newer cars have aluminum bodies (F-150?) but not aluminum frames which makes no sense to me. Steel car bodies last a _very_ long time these days, compared to the frames.
I think it's a lot to do with how it's designed too.. I kept an old hatchback bmw made in 2000 and that thing already have bit of plastic parts in the engine bay (coolant pipes no less) which are just time bombs. parts and labour costs are usually why people decided to go newer cars. good job on the old porsche though, just don't get the one with starter motor in the transmission case.. some of them are maintenance nightmares
I'm not familiar with BMWs of that era, but other German cars from that era, the plastic cooling system pipes will likely last forever- they don't corrode or crack like metal pipes would over time.
For really critical things like through hulls below the waterline on boats, plastic pipes like glass filled nylon (Marelon) are considered safer and more reliable than metal, because they never corrode, and are much physically stronger than a comparable weight metal part.
I grew up with 1970s European cars where every plastic or rubber part would fail eventually, but by the 90s the materials got much better.
that's good to hear! it's the only weak spot on that engine M44, and that particular plastic cooling pipe is in a nightmarish place right up against the firewall. Need tiny hands if you want to replace it while the engine's inside.
I'm all in on keeping older rigs on the road, but my experience has been that the monetary and effort cost is higher than what I'm seeing described here. Sure, it's technically possible to keep an older car in like-new condition, but it doesn't happen with an annual $1k trip to the shop. Cars are neither boats nor airplanes. The amount of use they get is an order of magnitude more. Everything wears out. Seats, window regulators, body mounts, pedals, interior molding, etc. That's all on top of the normal wear items like drivetrain, suspension, and whatnot. My househould has three vehicles currently, with 280k, 310k, and 420k miles on their respective odometers. I'm glad to keep them going, but it's constant upkeep, and the parts bill alone is quite substantial. Works for me, but definitely isn't for everyone.
No. A 10 year old Mercedes is not preferable to a newer used Honda Civic in terms of maintenance and reliability, unless you're a mechanic yourself. it's true that it's nicer vehicle, but having to go to a Mercedes service center instead of an independent shop really racks up the bills. If you're getting the used Mercedes because you don't have the finances to get a new one, the maintenance costs to have the Mercedes are going to sink you even further into debt, compared to a Honda Civic/equivalent.
> pay maybe $1000-2000 every year to stay on top of stuff, and it stays reliable indefinitely.
...and then they implement some new laws which state that cars older than year X are no longer allowed within zone Y because of emissions (think 'ULEZ' in London or variations on the 'Milieuzone' in several Dutch cities). A few years later they update X to (X + a few years) and expand Y to (Y + the rest of where you want to go). They'll also write into law that you can not adapt your car to abide by the required emissions standards, no no, buy a newer car you shall.
This is common practice in many European countries, if there is no US equivalent yet there will be one soon enough.
I live in the rust belt, where the average life expectancy of a car is about 10 years. 12-15 if you _really_ baby it. Except for one car that was totaled (got rear-ended by a texter), all of the cars I no longer own succumbed to a rotted out frame. Engines were fine, bodies were fine, interiors were fine.
But a frame. Can't really replace a frame. You can _sometimes_ repair it. You can buy some time by paying for an oil-based undercoating every year, but finding someone who will do it affordably _and_ do a good job is hard. (It's a messy, annoying job.)
I sort of want congress to mandate stainless steel or aluminum frames in all cars sold in the US, and I don't even care if it makes the cars cost more. It won't happen via state laws because the auto manufacturers are big campaign donors around here.
> I live in the rust belt, where the average life expectancy of a car is about 10 years.
Are you saying the "rust belt" region of the US, named for its history of steel manufacturing, is an area where cars rust more? Cars rust more where salt is used to deice roads. Salted roads overlap with the rust belt, but they are not related.
I have mixed feelings about this - having owned and repaired a lot of vehicles for my own use I don't think it's always true an engine will last half a million miles, just go watch the "I do cars" channel on youtube and you'll get some idea.
The big problem here is survivorship bias - the cars that did last will likely keep lasting. You see this with notoriously terrible cars like 1980s Jaguars. The owners have persisted through various catastrophic failures that would make ordinary people abandon the vehicle, so you end up with a subset of Jags that run nicely and have all the engineering problems sorted out by the after market.
Cars more than about 10-15 years old just aren't as safe as newer ones. That's the fundamental issue. With that said there are ways to mitigate the risk (drive more cautiously/slower, etc...).
That's really only true if you consider within the same class or model of car, where the technology has advanced... but old cars are so affordable you can get a much higher end and much safer car. Do you think a 2024 Chevy Trax is safer than a 2012 Audi Q5? Both are compact SUVs but you can buy 3-4 nice condition low mileage Q5s for the price of the Chevy.
Regardless of tech like changes in crumple zone design, you also can't negate the safety benefits of substantially better brakes, handling, driver comfort, and road visibility from a better designed car made with higher end parts and materials.
Depends on what engine you choose… you can get a base model that has an identical simple and reliable drivetrain to a Jetta or Golf, or some exotic engines that are very costly to maintain- like the V6 TDI.
Maintenance on an older Audi is expensive compared to, say, a Japanese economy car, but you're talking maybe $1k/year to maintain on average, vs $500/mo payments for the cheapest new car.
>Cars more than about 10-15 years old just aren't as safe as newer ones.
Can you give some examples? The only safety innovation I can think of recently the side airbags. The backup camera, which is a huge improvement to backing up accidents was probably over 15 years ago.
I had a vehicle with lane keeping and if I were a cop, I'd think I was drunk the way it weaved back and forth. It was a 2017 though, I hope it's improved but it seemed like a gimmick. I've never experienced the others, are they legit safety features, or just stuff to bullet point?
I doubt most people care much. Things like reliablity and comfort are in the equation. The point comes up in these discussions here but I'm pretty sure most people don't factor more safety into trading in an otherwise functioning car.
The increase in total loss designations by insurance companies is due to the extremely high costs charged by the shops contracted by them to do repairs.
The designation of a car as "totaled" is often an illusion and there is a thriving parallel market of auction houses, repair shops, salvage titling companies, and resellers who take the "ruined" cars, fix them, and sell them on the used market.
Insurance companies could deal directly with the lower cost shops but just like the Concur Travel cancer that is spreading across corporate America there are extremely perverse incentives between executives and boards to keep the system the way it is with all of the major players dealing only with each other.
There is probably an auctioneer within 30 minutes of where you are right now who will sell you a "total loss" car that you can repair, or have repaired, for a minuscule fraction of what an insurance contractor will charge-- often for less than the insurance payout (to both you and the adjuster).
Like all things fucked in our economy, the trend of exorbitant repair costs took off when private equity started buying up the regional insurance repair contractor near-monopolies like Service King (Carlyle Group) and Caliber Collision (Leonard Green).
Actually, insurance companies are already _very_ aggressively steering their customers into "lower-cost" shops, leading them to believe they should accept subpar repairs in order to keep costs down and profits up. In many cases they use non-OEM parts to keep repair costs down.
I think the real reason they total a car at 60-70% is because the cost is just an estimate. They don't want to keep sending an estimator out to approve more $$ in repairs, costing everyone time and money, and ultimately spending more than it would cost to just buy out the customer -- who, in many cases, might just like a big check to buy what they want, rather than weeks fixing their 'old' car.
Insurance companies also like to drag their heels to punish you for standing up for yourself and selecting a high-quality bodyshop. In the case of a minor front-end accident for a car in my household, they trickled the money out in bits and pieces. Every time the shop countered the insurance company's estimate, the insurance company would take 2 days to send an adjustor out, trickle out a few more dollars, wash, rinse, repeat. It's why I keep rental car coverage for our vehicles even when we don't need it -- to hold the insurance company's feet to the fire, so they feel the financial pain, too, when they hold your car hostage for a month.
>> It's why I keep rental car coverage for our vehicles even when we don't need it -- to hold the insurance company's feet to the fire, so they feel the financial pain, too, when they hold your car hostage for a month.
Most rental car coverage only lasts 30 days maximum (sometimes it’s even less). It’s unlikely that carrying rental car coverage does anything in practice when netted against the increase in your premiums and in light of the limited coverage plus the discounted rental rates insurance companies get from rental car companies. I would imagine your car insurance provider is ecstatic that you pay an extra $X amount a year to “stick it to them.”
I've seen this market in action. My dad had his car written off years ago and he bought it back the day after he got his payout. We just went to the yard where it was to be 'scrapped' and paid about 1/4 of the payout total to take it home. The only damage was to the side panels and bumper, so we replaced those ourselves and he still had a fair chunk of money left over.
The guy at the yard said any car without damage to the frame or drive train is likely to be picked up by a used car shop or private resellers who do the repairs themselves and flip them.
The catch is that most banks won’t finance “rebuilt-titled” cars, you don’t have a dealer warranty (and most plainly refuse to work on rebuilt cars) and the vehicle has a 50-60% (or less) resale value than a “clean-title”.
It's selective definancialization, and I love it. Same reason why buying tax foreclosures is such a great bargain: you don't have to compete with bank-financed buyers!
Huh. Well I happen to be shopping for a used care right now and in my area at least, Craigslist and Facebook are completely swamped with rebuilt title cars. And the vast majority of them are priced the same as clear title cars.
The opposite. With cars reaching much more advanced ages today, when a collision happens it's a write-off.
The modern car isn't 'disposable'. In fact, all statistics point to us holding onto cars longer today than ever before. Today's cars are the most durable that they've ever been.
The OP's article was careful to make this distinction, and I think it's very interesting (as well as being the crucial point of the article). Cars are now more reliable and last longer, but when they do develop a problem, it's less economically viable to repair them.
The definition of 'Totaled' is when a comparable car on the used market can replace your vehicle for less than or equal to the repair costs.
As such, it makes no sense to repair a totaled vehicle. You should instead buy a comparable used vehicle.
But saying the word 'Disposable' is pretty bad with regards to the headline. It doesn't capture the full effect of what the stats are showing. That is, we are all keeping vehicles for longer. Longer miles, longer life.
Repair costs for old vehicles always grows as old parts tend to be harder to find (factories have shifted production to newer vehicles. So you are forced to look for scrap). Meanwhile, older cars lose more and more value as they age.
As GP said, the author recognized that people are keeping cars longer and that they are more durable. However a new wrinkle is that "the proportion of brand new vehicles being written off has increased." This is due to the costs of repairing "Advanced Driver Assistance Systems” such as automatic braking and lane-keeping assistance. These systems include sensors, cameras, and other equipment that must be carefully calibrated, which adds a lot of skilled labor costs to the repairs. It's no longer the case that a repair is just hammering out dents and spraying some paint.
Yep, they are surprisingly complex and expensive sensor-controlled devices, and a modern car might have a dozen of them. Just their replacement alone will be thousands of dollars, on top of the actual collision repair work.
> As such, it makes no sense to repair a totaled vehicle. You should instead buy a comparable used vehicle.
I sometimes wonder how much the carbon footprint of the auto industry would change if people preferred to fix them instead of throwing the whole thing away just because of a fender bender or an expensive part broke
Our CR-V was rear-ended. It's a great car and it's pretty likely to be totaled because the cost of repairs is going to end up being higher than the insurance company is willing to pay. (And then I expect it's going to be a massive fight for me to get paid enough to replace it like-for-like, but that's a separate issue from the overall footprint.)
I don't see any reasonable way around this, though. If I have a car that I could replace for $8K plus the cost of replicating some mods [CarPlay head unit, tow hitch, and heated seats] and would salvage for $1K, I can't reasonably expect someone else's insurance company to pay $12.5K in costs (for repairs plus rentals/loss of use plus diminished value plus incidentals) to put me back in a place where I then have a crash-repaired car worth $7K plus $1K in cash in my pocket for diminished value. What other carbon reduction could be bought for that extra $3K in costs vs. repairing our damaged car?
From the at-fault driver's and their insurance company's point of view: the driver's negligence caused around $8-9K of direct damages to me plus several hundred in incidental/related expenses. That's what the driver is liable for (and the insurance company on the hook to cover as per their agreement), not a $12+K figure for a liability for damages amount that was thousands lower.
> I don't see any reasonable way around this, though. If I have a car that I could replace for $8K and would salvage for $1K, I can't reasonably expect someone else's insurance company to pay $12.5K in costs (for repairs plus rentals/loss of use plus diminished value plus incidentals) to put me back in a place where I then have a crash-repaired car worth $7K plus $1K in cash in my pocket for diminished value.
The problem with that logic is the assumption that the car can be replaced for $8K. To some (maybe most) people, cars are non-fungible and there is a significant amount of personal, non-transferrable value in one particular vehicle, due e.g. to the memories acquired in connection with it.
Part of the reason that people get upset when the insurance company decides to declare their car totaled is that the replacement value offered is significantly lower than they would have accepted for the car had it not been in an accident-- The actuarial value assigned isn't properly valuing the intangibles.
Edit to add: Or, in other words, if the market-clearing price of "comparable" vehicles represented the actual value of the car to its owner, the car would have already been on the used market. The fact that it wasn't signals that there must be some premium over the market price that's necessary to make the owner whole.
Here is another angle on that "sentimentality" you're talking about. If I've been following the book on every maintenance item, driving gently, and proactively going after any rust that starts to form on the vehicle that is then smashed up in an accident I don't want an "equivalent market value" used vehicle that was neglected and beat to shit by the previous owner just because it's the same make, model, and age. Especially since that previous owner was a chain smoker.
True. As a car person, I’m expecting an annoying battle here, and that’s over just replacing the utilitarian aspects of what is a pure utility car for us.
If it was my fairly modified (by me) ‘66 Mustang, that would be very difficult to get to a settlement figure that I’d find fair.
I literally can’t get another light truck that’s as compact and as useful as the one I have. My choice is to buy a giant semi truck or an suv with a 4-foot box bed. There’s more to vehicles then sentimental or book value.
As it stands I’ll probably try to get a mini van and put vinyl floors in.
What you describe would be insurance over the minimum coverage, which is available. If you take the minimum, expect to get the 'market value' of a replacement because that's what you agreed to when you initiated the policy.
There are two key cases: when you are forced to deal with your insurance company because no one else is at fault. In that case, you get what you bought.
When another driver is at fault and you elect to not use your insurance company for whatever reason. In that case, you didn't have any opportunity to pre-arrange with this other driver's insurance company and you have to fall back on the law as a backstop.
All dozen of my kids were conceived in the back of that 1997 Toyota Camry. The car was given to me from my Grandpa after he passed. All those memories from the past 27 years clearly has a ton of sentimental value; I put it at $2M. I'll settle for half of that though.
The total valued does not include the significant time of finding an equivalent vehicle at that price in the rough and tumble used car market.
It also does not price in the significant risk that a used car of this vintage significant undisclosed defects that are hard to detect by inspection at purchase.
So if someone else is at fault, their insurance can total your car? I thought that was only a factor for your own comprehensive/collision insurance. I would expect if my car is damaged and the repairs are $X, that is the other drivers liability regardless of the value of my car??
Imagine your 1990 Honda Accord is smashed into a 2’ x 2’ x 2’ cube or caught fire and burned to the ground as a result of the accident that was someone else’s fault.
Do you think that the other insurance should be on the hook to repair the remains of your car into a functioning 1990 Honda Accord?
Or is paying to replace the car with like sufficient? (I hate it, but I have to agree that it’s far more practical to allow the replacement.)
That depends. In the general case I'd call a 2000 Toyota close enough because I don't consider the 1990 Honda collectable. However if you are a collector that 1990 is a 30 year old classic and you can demand more. To demand more than means you need to show you will - get a special insurance policy that will demand a 1990 Honda if anything happens. You also won't be driving this 1990 Honda on the roads except in context of a parade (you put it on a trailer to get to the parade).
I think the issue is mostly from misaligned motivations from insurance companies and car manufacturers.
On the insurance side, they're motivated by finances. If the quote to fix a car is $10k and the car itself was only worth $8k, the insurance company is just going to give you $8k to find yourself an equivalent car to the one you "totaled". There's no intrinsic motivation for the insurance company to go for the $10k repair? Maybe allow them to have carbon credits or something for spending an extra $2k to keep the same car on the road? How do you tease out how much of a carbon win this is? (and who is in charge of deciding that?)
So then on the car manufacturer side, they're motivated by sales/ brand reliability. Maybe if cars were more repair-friendly that would help change the equation? That comes with the potential trade-off of new cars being more expensive and/or less reliable if they can't be as tightly integrated as they currently are. So if car manufacturers are motivated to make the most reliable/cheap car, they are going to forgo making them less repairable.
If you try and get both sides of this equation onto the same page, I don't know that you could trust that there wouldn't be some under the table shenanigans going on without making things so overregulated that both new cars and car repairs are both more expensive?
If you priced carbon emissions for building the car into the cost of new cars, it would fix this. In the case of your example, the used car would be worth more than $8k because new cars would be correspondingly more expensive.
Of course the problem is as you said how do you price carbon emissions.
But, that already isn't what happens. A totaled vehicle is almost never thrown away. They're sold for salvage value. Some of them are repaired, and sold as rebuilt vehicles. Others are stripped for parts that are recycled to fix other vehicles. And anything left over is recycled for raw material.
The change to unibody construction in the 70s/80s and the more-recent move to 'gigapressing' an entire car with body work has unfortunately made repair much more difficult.
In the past body shops would realign frames, pull body work back into shape, and weld in new pieces but it's just not safe and practical to do that with unibody vehicles even if you did have the tooling and machinery to ensure that it was done right and everything is actually back into factory spec and alignment.
It's almost a shame that the electric vehicle 'skateboard' concept (essentially a rolling chassis in industrial/truck vehicle terminology) didn't really get anywhere - but I have to imagine that design constraints, extra weight from attaching the body to the chassis, and other relevant factors that pushed us into unibody vehicles in the first place also made concept unfeasible.
> weld in new pieces but it's just not safe and practical to do that with unibody vehicles
Unibody cars are repaired safely all the time, whether for collision or rust repair. It may have been easier in the body-on-frame days, but it safe and practical now still.
People might prefer to fix them. The paradigm of replacing rather than repairing is effectively enforced by insurance policies.
A different insurance model would be necessary to adopt a repair orientation. Maybe it's the equivalent of paying more to be "green," except that consumers don't really consider it as an option when they buy a car insurance policy. It seems like this kind of option would justify higher insurance premiums, so maybe a major insurer could consider promoting one as environmentally friendly.
I think it would decrease, but not as much as you'd think.
When most cars are "totaled," the car itself is sold for salvage. If it can be fixed relatively easily, the car will be purchased at a salvage auction, fixed, and resold.
If it can't be easily fixed, the parts that can be salvaged will be resold to other autobody shops.
While the consumer might be "throwing away" the car, the car itself isn't generally being thrown in a landfill until all of the functional parts are reused in some way.
It makes sense to repair a totaled vehicle if you can do most of the repair work yourself instead of paying the market rate. A friend has an older Volkswagen Jetta that was hit from behind at an intersection. There was no frame damage or airbag deployment but the insurance company totaled it because inflation has driven labor charges for simple repairs to ridiculous levels. My friend took the insurance payout and repaired it himself using a junkyard bumper. Works fine. But he had more free time and better mechanical skills than most people.
I can't get the link to work at the moment so I was wondering: are the stats being covered here including or excluding EVs? I've read elsewhere that EV repair costs are artificially high due to various other factors surrounding the manufacture and distribution of their parts versus ICE vehicles, not only but especially the batteries being SO expensive that it borderline out-prices a new car.
We generally get about 8 years out of a car before we start running into larger repairs. This tends to become the point we decide to trade it in for something new.
Cars can be both disposable, but also true we keep them longer. For example, my car's TPMS tire pressure gauge battery died, but the battery is internal to the system and isn't designed to replace the battery. So a repair/replacement is $600-900. But I am not replacing the car or getting the repair. I am simply living with the warning light on.
It's been something of a give and take. Modern cars are significantly more reliable than they used to be, often going 150k miles without any issues beyond regular maintenance. But when they do break, repairs are a lot more costly.
What do you think about Cubans keeping cars from 1950s running for as long as they did? It seems to me that maybe we live in a society that is overly permissive of replacing items.
They did that at great cost - the cars are not very close to factory original - most parts of been replaced multiple times. Those are not the original engines. It would have been much less labor to just replace the cars with something more modern. However Cuba had plenty of low cost labor and no ability to import anything else so they did it anyway.
Cars from the 50s and 60s were comparatively less complex and easier to maintain and repair. Of course, they don't get the gas mileage or meet the same emissions criteria, and in a crash they aren't as survivable because they don't compress to reduce force on the occupants.
This kind of argument ignores the real cost of having to upkeep a 50s car: the human suffering. Cubans are forced to use this option and their society suffers from it.
I imagine the mining of materials, waste from discarded car, etc. makes up for these things but I don’t know. I do think overall we are a very wasteful society and we cause way too much pollution.
Keeping an old car functioning is only better for the environment up to a certain point. If your cars are staying on the road long enough, eventually it makes more environmental sense to replace a 50 year old car that gets 18 miles per gallon with a new one that gets 45 and can last another 50 years.
I just want a cheap, safe dependable car. Anti lock brakes, a couple of air bags, crumple zones, maybe Bluetooth, real dials, two base versions: AWD and non AWD. That’s it. No telephony, no on star, no breathalyzers. I don’t need to play Witcher in it. Just need it to turn on and then off after running around.
I’m holding onto my ancient POS because it’s impossible apparently to find the above. Everything is new and full of drive by wire, telephony, spyware crap. Oh and the prices… come on!
I never was a car buff, I wish I had been as it definitely appears we have ended an era and I mourn isolated from the gear heads.
I wish there was an actual community of people building open source cars. It exists for fucking airplanes but there's __nothing__ on the vehicle market. Pool some money, crash test a couple, get some shop in asia to make frames. Make it fairly modular, something like an EV version of the 1995 ford ranger, something where people can throw whatever they want on the back and turn it into anything. Super bare minimum, no egregious plastics all over the inside, just use off the shelf parts and people can customize as they see fit.
People make their own airplanes. What nobody tells you is that most people who complete the airplane would be time and money ahead getting a job at McDonald's and buying a completed airplane once they saved up enough money. However there are not enough people who want an airplane to pay for the costs/liability of setting up a factory to build one and so you have no choice if you want a new one.
People also build their own cars from scratch. It isn't as well known, but it is done. Again not a good use of time or money but if you want something specific that isn't on the market you have no choice.
Most people making their own plane are following plans and thus not experimenting. They are making an experimental plane because regulations make that their best option, but if it was possible to get a new plane for a mass produced cost they wouldn't. The end goal is the plane not making a plane themself. (most don't finish the plane but that is a different story)
There are kit car sellers and you can build yourself a car (kit or plans), but it’s a ridiculous amount of time to hand-build a car from plans and still a very large amount of time to build and paint a kit car.
I got a new Corolla and felt that it fit the bill.
It still has newer features like lane centering and radar cruise control. However, it's a good, simple, reliable car at a much more reasonable price point.
As for feature creep - this is inevitable because all 99.99% of consumers care about are features and price. It's like people asking for a "non-smart TV". It's not going to happen, ever. Consumers who care about that aren't a percent of a percent of the market.
There are tons of models that match this list if you drop the no-DBW requirement. My 6-speed Wrangler is throttle by wire and I have no issues on-road or off-road. You can also usually adjust the throttle if you don't like the feel. Maybe take a look at Subarus if you want no-frills AWD.
I bought a Ford Maverick last week and it's pretty close to this. In addition to bluetooth, the head unit supports carplay/android auto. But it has no built-in nav system or subscription bullshit.
It has knobs and buttons for everything you want to use while driving, including volume, transport controls (on both the steering wheel and below the screen), radio tuner, and climate control.
The closest alternative I looked at was the Hyundai Santa Cruz, which was more expensive. All of its buttons except those on the steering wheel and column stalks are capacitive nightmares with no tactile feedback. That alone was enough to help make my decision.
Old timer here, back in the day (60s thru 80s) owners worked on their cars to save money, this kept garage repair prices in check because they knew we had another choice, ourselves. Today, I still service my vehicles because I purchased the electronic meters and testers that are required. (I realize not everyone thinks they have the ability to service their car, YouTube is a great source.
Maybe you don't want to get your hands dirty. While changing out a turn signal light can be a pain, you can do it, thus saving a lot of money. Accomplishing a difficult job is a very good feeling. If you don't have the required tools, rent or borrow them.
There are limitations, I tend to drive my vehicles to higher mileage. I won't change out half-shafts anymore or automatic window motors, as I have in the past many times. (I pay the garage to do it now.) But this is due to age, not how difficult the job is. Auto garages are opportunist, they'll charge whatever the market can stand, just like the new car sales. Until we make them change, they won't.
I live in Phoenix and now take Waymo regularly, and it seems like we're close to a world in which most people take self-driving cars most of the time, crash rates plummet, and these kinds of articles come to resemble articles from 1910 about horse-related problems.
(Anecdotally, I'm outside Harrisburg, and there are no self-driving cars in... this state? People drive their cars just like cave people did, with their hands on the wheel!)
Of note, the article mentions your sentiment near the conclusion:
> Perhaps one day we’ll all whizz around in self-driving cars and accidents will be rare. But that’s still a ways off.
It’s also a grid roadway as a post-automobile city.
Granted they got SF working too, which is pretty varied terrain but it took a lot of training. I guess we can roll it out city by city but will they ever recoup the cost?
I've long thought that the bus market would be ideal - the city bus doesn't take most of the roads in your city so you don't need to program them in (or than a dead in). Just make sure the roads department works with the transit department to program in just the detours needed before starting work.
I welcome self driving technology when they become available, but from a system perspective, cars and car related infrastructure imposed tremendous cost on our environment and urban fabric.
I think it is silly to think self driving cars gets rid of parking. If you don't use a car much it is cheaper to use a taxi service. However people who use a car often will be money ahead owning their own. Plus if you own the car you can keep your "junk" in it while doing something else. Most cars are needed during rush hour, so there isn't much need for cars the rest of the day.
All of which means we need nearly as much parking in the future. Sure we save a little because the car will leave your immediate area (read CO2 and other emissions) for free parking out of sight, but they are still parked. You will want it parked somewhat close to you because you never know when you will have a family emergency and have to leave early.
On a tangent, I wonder how many car manufacturers would actually sell a self-driving car if they were able to build one. Creating a taxi fleet and charging for usage seems much more profitable.
Or at the very least, the price would go up a lot. Who cares about the cost, when the value of the sold good is so high? Why sell it cheap? I note that Waymo has no intention of selling the things.
Most of them. Car manufacturers aren't too greatly in vertical integration. One could argue that having a car rental agency for manufacturer would be great idea. Get cars at cost, rent them short to medium term, keep maintenance inhouse sell them after some period for most of the price.
But I don't think there is any manufacturers that rent vehicles for short term and neither there are any rental firms that manufacture their cars...
In the end making things and renting them is different businesses.
The economics don't work. Some people are willing to pay extra for a car in perfect condition. Some people will happily save money by using a beat up car. By selling a car they get their money now from a high priced car. If they try to be the taxi they need to figure out who will demand (and pay for) the perfect car, vs who will demand the cheapest car. This is one more way that cars are not interchangeable.
This is actually the thing I am most excited about with the prospect of self-driving, the biggest way car-centric infrastructure ruins cities is by parking requirements.
Unfortunately most cities in the USA have parking minimums so even if a market change occurs and they are all empty the lots will stick around for a while until they are no longer legally required.
5 years ago you couldn't hop in a commercial self-driving taxi in a major US city. Now you can. The progress has been slower than everyone's predictions but it is still substantial.
In 1897, you could hop in a commercial electric taxi in London. Alas, Londoners still have many gasoline cars on the road.
Availability and mass adoption are two very entirely different things.
The time in which people take most commutes by any kind of car is: today... 51% of people commute by car currently. That took 136 years.
'most of the time' for 'most people' is quite a high bar. That's a lot of travel, for about 4 billion people. A few people in Phoenix taking one after a night at the bar doesn't even to begin to scratch that surface.
We're very much still at the 'Carl Benz demoing his horseless carriage' stage of self-driving cars.
IF, and this is a big if - self driving cars prove safer than human drivers in all conditions - governments will mandate it in all new cars and in 12 more years they will be the majority, and a few more years and governments will ban everything else (if not directly insurance via high rates).
However right now they are not ready for that. They don't work in all conditions and we don't have unbiased safety studies.
For varying definitions of “governments” and “will”. You’re looking at this from a very western perspective.
For example, airbags have proven to drastically increase safety, yet almost a half-century later they’re still not required by many countries across 2 and a half continents. Governments only require safety equipment as far as their population can afford it.
65 years ago we had never traveled outside Earth's atmosphere. 50 years ago we had traveled to the Moon. Surely by now we are visiting the nearest star, no?
It's incredible to me how many people honestly believe they can predict the future, when the future is so clearly unpredictable. Even while you acknowledge that everyone's predictions were too optimistic, in the very same sentence you insist on an optimistic prediction.
Waymo in SF is super expensive. Like, $1/min+. Is Phoenix more financially accessible? I’d love to ditch my car for Waymo but I’d easily drop $40+/day which is a lot more than, say, a $300/month lease.
“Simplicity is a great virtue but it requires hard work to achieve it and education to appreciate it. And to make matters worse: complexity sells better.” — Edsger Dijkstra
For a humorous and oddly interesting YouTube view on what happens to bad engines in cars, see the I Do Cars YouTube channel. Come for the oil starvation, stay for the newly installed inspection ports. On a good day, he'll get some parts to sell from each core. He also occasionally goes through the process of pulling usable parts from an entire junked car.
SUVs and smaller trucks are now almost universally moving to 4cyl and 6cyl turbos with iffy CVTs. The channels run by folks with greasy overalls are pretty uniform in saying these vehicles won't last like their predecessors (even the Toyotas).
Is this a genuine sentiment or just people upset that their favorite vehicle won't have a massive gas guzzling engine anymore? There are a number of people that also dislike trucks with aluminum bodies, despite that aluminum alloys can be strong (aircraft use them all the time) and it keeps your truck from turning into a rust bucket after 5 years of snowy winters. Car ownership is not always a rational thing and people will defend some strange platforms based only on emotion.
How are the CVTs in these trucks iffy compared to other CVTs? There's a number of reliable auto makers using CVTs for years, such as Subaru, Honda and even Toyota on their other vehicles. CVT transmissions have been in mass produced cars longer than most of us have been alive.
CVTs (generally) rely on belts sliding on cones. With more weight, you need more torque, with more torque you get more wear on the internal components. This is a big reason why CVTs have historically targeted smaller cars instead of larger trucks.
When it comes to motor reliability, generally speaking a smaller engine with higher compression running closer to its peak output all the time will have more wear than a slightly larger engine that doesn't have to run at as high of pressures and load percentage. Lower RPMs needed for the same power output means less friction on all the components in the motor. There's a lot of variances in that so it is not exactly a given.
These kind of go away with more modern "eCVTs" which don't rely on belts and hybrid systems which can help even out that peak engine load challenge. But still, turbos will generally reduce your reliability. More moving parts, higher pressures, etc. The questions are, will the increased efficiency balance out the reduced reliability and will the motor reliability be the thing that does the car in at the end.
When people use the term "chain" in this context, they're usually thinking of it moving a sprocket with teeth that fit in between gaps on the chain. You're right that automotive CVTs are made with a lot of metal bits connected on a band for greater durability, but most would still just call it a belt as it relies on the friction between the edges of it and the cones to move the cones instead of pulling on teeth. Think the differences between a timing "belt" versus a timing "chain", but I do acknowledge a timing belt is usually non-metallic.
Sure, one could spend quite a bit of money making it even beefier with more and more exotic materials, but in the end its kind of hard to match the friction efficiency of well-fitting gears directly connecting the torque. You're pretty much guaranteed to encounter more friction on the belt sliding on the cones compared to well lubricated and properly made gears, and more friction means more wear which means shorter life.
But this is kind of the idea of eCVTs. Instead of belts sliding on cones (pulleys), they use motor/generators and novel gearset placements to change how the torque flows through the system. In this way friction is considerably reduced. There are no belts to stretch or wear out.
after hearing that the prius cvt didn't use a belt I had to watch a few youtube videos on planetary gearsets - mind bending stuff and dead simple to boot!
Both turbos and cvts are genuinely a reliability downgrade. It's because of fundamental and unavoidable reasons in each case. This applies to all vehicles, old or new, including ones they've already been used in for years like how turbo is a standard part of practically all large deisels.
"a number of reliable auto makers using CVTs for years" is an utterly valueless statement. It says, proves, disproves, or even merely indicates, nothing.
There are countless reasons for any company to do anything, including for a "reliable" automaker to use a less-reliable part or design.
Both turbos and cvts increase gas mileage. Simple as that. That one thing has become so important that it's now worth sacrificing other things to get it.
If you have a large engine and a small engine producing the same amount of power the large one will have a lot less load and so will last longer (assuming all else is equal - which is never the case). However it doesn't matter in practice as a modern car body and suspension system will wear out long before the engine in most cases.
>There's a number of reliable auto makers using CVTs for years, such as Subaru
Isn't the CVT going bad one of the main complaints people have with Subaru? Like at 100,000-150,000 miles. Other than the head gasket issue which was fixed a decade ago? Asking, since I'm in the market for a used vehicle, and the CVT reliability has me hesitant.
I just saw a video about a Nissan truck where you can't get transmission parts -- you can only buy entire transmissions. It's outrageous. Seal leaking? Time for a new transmission!
Yes that video from Dave's shop has been making the rounds. Its definitely a problem but honestly if the seal was removed and the exterior, interior, and depth were measured it can be purchased by spec instead of by a parts match for the exact transmission. That's like saying a furniture company won't sell me a screw that I lost, so the cabinet is worthless. I spec what kind of screw I need by taking a sample of another or measurements of another and go buy a generic screw.
That doesn't alone make them terrible though. CVTs have less complexity, so they will be cheaper. Dependable cars have CVTs for reasons other than cheapness.
For example, a dual clutch transmission is complex and expensive, but at the same time, I wouldn't call it better. There's tradeoffs in all types of transmissions. My car might have one, but if I were driving a truck, I don't think I would want a DSG.
Yes! Enjoyable and I have learned a lot about how car engines work and are built watching it. And how some companies (cough - Audi - cough) intentionally overengineer their designs so much to boost service and repair cash flows.
GM requiring Google integration and eliminating Apple Car Play and Android Auto makes me think a brand new model is immediately disposable.
If I have choice removed from me, in particular a choice I very much care about, then I’m going to care about owning that car less. The more that happens the more people may view vehicles as pure utility and much easier to walk away from for any reason, especially repair cost. Who cares whether you replace a Chevrolet with a Ford when they are untouchable boxes?
Insurance companies would love this BYW. If they can find a cheaper alternative that’s another brand, you’ll be reimbursed for that, not what you originally bought.
It certainly looks like many small choices are being made towards automobiles being truly disposable.
I think this points to a slightly deeper issue sitting just below "consumer choice", which is "tight coupling."
It sounds like GM has made a tighter-coupling between their vehicle and one particular brand of smartphone, and that's suggestive that other tight-couplings might exist elsewhere the design. The more tightly-coupled parts (to particular brands, form-factors, and proprietary connectors) the harder/more-expensive it will be to keep the overall car-system working over a decade or two as some of its hard-dependencies stop getting built.
So a lack of smartphone choice isn't just annoying, it also suggests something about the designers not planning for long-term maintenance.
I think it is also a trust issue - GM doesn't trust Apple will approve updates to their iphone app and so won't risk it. Also Apple charges a lot of $$$ to car company to connect to carplay and I think GM called their bluff. I'm not sure what the costs to android auto are or why GM wouldn't still connect to that.
Note that as a consumer I don't trust anyone above. Sure GM's app will work great now, but in 3-6 years I expect they will decide drop support for my currently working car in their app. Apple and Google will also change their OS and so the app that does work with my car won't work anymore on new phones. I also expect updates to CarPlay/Android Auto that won't work with my old car in a few years. Nobody in this business wants to provide support for the average car which is currently 12 years old - unless you pay which someone driving a 12+ year old car won't want to do. (GM provides parts for those older cars, but people pay for those parts)
I bought a Infinity g35 cash in 2005 and have never let a mechanic touch it. Done all the repairs including ac work myself. There is literally a youtube video that walks you through every step for almost all common repairs for your EXACT model. Its sooo easy and often faster to do it myself instead of go the mechanic and leave it with them multiple days.
I would highly recommend young people buy a popular model or platform based car and just learn how to do mechanic work. Its fun and rewarding.
Car is currently 19 years old going on 20 and besides the initial amount I bought it for it costs me about 200-300 in parts and fluids to maintain. Hats off to the engineers at Nissian. This thing prints money.
It feels like risk mitigation to me. With all the interconnected aspects of a car the repair might be reasonably priced or might not. If the insurance company just "pays for the repair" then they've committed to either price, or even if they have a limit then they might reach the limit and still need to replace the car on top of it. Or the car might get repaired but have some issues, and there's no good way to just say "this car isn't as good as before the accident, but here's $1000 to make you whole".
Instead they declare the car totaled and recoup what they can on the other end. If you want to actually _keep_ your totaled car you'll have to pay for it, because it _does_ have value. I had a car "totaled" when it was rear-ended, but it was still drivable and I would have liked to keep it, do some minimal repairs, and just accepted the wonky back end. But to keep it I would have received something $3,000 less on a $10,000 car and it didn't seem worth it.
I don't know if the car was chopped up and helped make other cars whole, or vice versa. Some part of it ended up on a discount used car lot. And that's probably fine. Cars are kind of fungible and declaring a car "totaled" is just a way to take advantage of that and seems like a legitimate efficient-market approach.
Car part prices are a scam... on most cheap cars, a small crash, broken bumper, lights and the radiator (+ all the sensors) means the car is totalled, because just the parts cost more than a new car. How the hell can a single headlight for a cheap car... so just some plastic, not even LEDs yet, cost 800euros?
Sadly, until something (culture, new player on the market, regulation....) changes, that car will be totalled and scrapped.
I'm conflicted. I know modern vehicles are so complex and if something breaks it actually is cheaper to just go bet a new car.....but I don't really like that.
On the other hand, most of my close family that I know has a vehicle that is fixable. I know how to do basic stuff like change oil, change a tire or break pads, but I also know how much vehicles are digital and I really don't enjoy that.
The issue is that people who drive super unrepairable cars create externalities for everyone else. Insurance should only cover up to the 90th percentile of repair costs
Obviously we need technological development, to keep everyone in a job. What when we cannot maintain or afford those systems? This includes systems of production, as well as the products themselves.
There are full parking lots with brand new cars that go under press or get disassembled for parts because dealership don’t want sell them at a cheaper prices.
> the unsold cars that are older than two years old, will have no alternative but to be either crushed, dismantled and/or their parts recycled.
Want to see for yourself? Do a quick search on Google Maps of Baltimore, Maryland, looking south of Broening Hwy in Dundalk, there you will see a massive expanse of space where many unsold cars are currently parked.
That lot in Baltimore is a vehicle processing lot for the Port of Baltimore. Cars manufactured overaseas usually come by boat and delivered to places like that. The lot they're referencing is owned/managed by Wallenius Wilhelmsen which specializes in this RoRo style of logistics that are common with overseas car shipping. They'll sit there for a short period of time as all the customs work takes place and then shipped out all over the country after by rail or truck. Seeing a single snapshot in Google Maps of hundreds of new cars tells you nothing, you'd have to actually analyze how long those cars are staying there.
Seeing a lot with a lot of new cars with delivery wrap still on Google Maps isn't indicative of some new car graveyard, its just showcasing the ignorance of how car imports work. What, did they think a car manufacturing plant in Germany just suddenly teleports cars into dealer lots in the US? Did they think they were delivered by plane?
Every day in the United States, a large number of cars are being produced. Most of these cars never get sold to customers because people just can’t afford them.
Oh yes, that makes perfect sense, every day they make 100 cars and then scrap more than 50 of them.
The car manufacturing industry can’t stop producing new automobiles because they would have to close their factories and lay off thousands of their workers.
Layoffs do happen, but they are hard to do because the auto makers are selling some cars. The factory works at one speed, and so if they sell 100 cars but make 200 what can they do.
The above is why companies try to do just in time manufacturing. However this is always easier on paper than the real world. Those factories need to shutdown for a week-several months every year to repair tools and rearrange for the next model year, and they need some cars saved up for that. In addition other disasters mean sometimes they can't get parts and so there is more reason to have a buffer of unsold cars.
Yeah, I thought the actual premise was interesting (I'm sure there is a good amount of unsold inventory that is recycled/destroyed/etc., just like in any goods industry) and was interested to learn more about the mechanics of the process, but that article was just ridiculous - 0 actual numbers and it felt like it was written by a third grader.
> currently, there are 6 billion people on our plant, and 10 billion running cars. This is because most families own an average of two to three cars
False and false. According to more reputable sources, there are only ~ 1.5 billion cars in the world. And to the many families that own two or more cars in the US, there are many more families that own 0 cars elsewhere in the world...
>Every day in the United States, a large number of cars are being produced. Most of these cars never get sold to customers because people just can’t afford them. The car manufacturing industry can’t stop producing new automobiles because they would have to close their factories and lay off thousands of their workers.
That is an obvious lie. It is obviously more expensive to produce and scrap a car than to not produce one at all. What you do if demand is low is you produce less. It is economically more viable to pay workers for standing around than to pay them to build and scrap a car. So the excuse about jobs is another lie.
>Want to see for yourself? Do a quick search on Google Maps of Baltimore, Maryland, looking south of Broening Hwy in Dundalk, there you will see a massive expanse of space where many unsold cars are currently parked.
Which is evidence of what exactly? That cars exist that aren't sold? Surely that is no surprise.
