• treesquid@lemmy.world
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      2 months ago

      The government made money on the auto bailouts. That actually turned out to be a good investment. Cash for Clunkers was the real bailout: taxpayers paid thousands of dollars to people buying new cars so they’d destroy their old car instead of putting it into the used car market, driving up the prices of all cars and denying lower-income folks the ability to purchase a reasonable car for a reasonable price. Then Covid hit and demand shot through the roof and we all got fucked.

  • CannedYeet@lemmy.world
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    2 months ago

    This is kind of a misleading statistic. Cars have gotten more reliable. There’s less reason to buy new. Saavy buyers buy used so the average new car buyer is increasingly from the subset of the population that’s materialistic and bad with money.

  • DarkFuture@lemmy.world
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    2 months ago

    Then maybe the auto industry should stop donating to Republicans.

    The numbers don’t lie. Republicans are bad for our economy. Bad economy means people don’t buy the 1st or 2nd most expensive thing they’ll ever buy (since many will never be homeowners).

  • TheLastOfHisName@lemmy.world
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    2 months ago

    My 2014 Hyundai Sonata is about ready to bite the big one. I will not be getting another car for a while. The nearest bus stop to my apartment is just under a mile away, and my knees are shite. I’m looking at getting a motorized scooter to jet me up the sidewalkless stretch of road I live on to the bus stop, then commute in to work. I work for the city, so I have a free bus pass.

    It’s gonna suck for a while, but I don’t have any better options.

    • Lund3@sh.itjust.works
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      2 months ago

      2014?? My Nissan Primera from 96 is still running fine. Check with a mechanic if its possible to resurrect your car. It should hold for longer.

      • TheLastOfHisName@lemmy.world
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        2 months ago

        Truthfully, it’s not worth it. It had an engine replacement a few years ago, and lately, I’m racking up repair bills faster than I can pay them off.

      • 123@programming.dev
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        2 months ago

        Hyundai’s and kias are known for costing more in labor and parts to repair (while taking a chance it might not work out) than a comparable car in working order.

      • rikonium@discuss.tchncs.de
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        2 months ago

        Hyundai and Kia have multiple engines through the 2010’s that are prone to varying degrees of death from sudden to less-so-but-still-immediate. (there’s been lawsuits, extended warranties, etc.)

        And that’s before you include the whole easy-theft design flaw increasing insurance and vandalism risk from the same time period.

        It’s a shame since it really kicked off their “solid value car with some sneaky design flaw that’ll kill it/burn it/strand you/cost a lot of money later/etc.” trend that continues to this day - even in their electric models.

        If it’s a second car and exclusively driven locally then you can be fine with one especially since you’ll have lots of cheap parts at junkyards for a while to come. Especially if the engine’s been replaced already under the lawsuit but multiple replacement engines isn’t unheard of. And you’ll want to change oil every 3-4k miles and watch the oil level like a hawk.

        Not saying they haven’t made a solid individual vehicle nor are all lawsuit vehicles about to die but it’s not really great having that Sword of Damocles dangling to save a buck. (of course it depends on how many bucks are involved)

  • CADmonkey@lemmy.world
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    2 months ago

    And once people who fix their old Camry umpteen times instead of buying a new one, there will be even more lobbying for anti-repair.

  • Blackmist@feddit.uk
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    2 months ago

    It’s OK, we’ll just rent vehicles per journey, and in order to make things more efficient, put extra seats in and run bigger cars between popular destinations. Maybe even use rails for really popular places.

    Maybe they’ll think of a name for this in the future.

      • AdolfSchmitler@lemmy.world
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        2 months ago

        Without public transportation they aren’t. When you live 20 miles from your job in Bumfuck, USA how do you get there without a vehicle?

        • VeganPizza69 Ⓥ@lemmy.vg
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          2 months ago

          No, they still are. You can always turn a luxury into a relative need by stretching out resource intensity. I could easily make the case for commuting with rockets from the Moon to Earth and back, or for some billionaire commuting with a private jet. Doesn’t make it not a luxury.

          If you hate it, protest against the car system and suburbia, and for dense urban development with public transit. There is no alternative.

        • SnarkoPolo@lemmy.world
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          2 months ago

          Dude, I’m in the San Diego area. And if I had to rely on the bus, a simple grocery shopping trip would take at least 3 hours, not counting a mile and a half walk to and from the nearest stop. I did take a train and an express bus to work, because it happened to stop directly at my workplace.

      • Duamerthrax@lemmy.world
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        2 months ago

        I don’t want air ride and I don’t want 10 speed auto. My father got a 2020 F350 with a 10 speed auto and it turned itself to gravel. It’s a POS that I’m hounding him to sell once it’s payed off. Who the fuck thought a press on timing gear was a good idea?

        My father is a boomer and can be shamed into vanity purchases. That’s who’s speeding 100k on trucks.

  • Man_kind@sh.itjust.works
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    2 months ago

    Its gonna get worse. This is start of second much worse dark age.

    What makes things cheaper and more affordable, is mass production. As cars get too expensive, they’ll have to manufacture fewer of them. As they manufacture fewer of them, they will get more expensive.

    In the dark ages, most had nothing, but kings had castles, and horses, and feasts, slaves and whores.

    This time it might be a bit different since AI can provide labour, but their problem that will still remain, is that only the rich will be consumers.

    So the overall wealth of the world will go down. Most will be poor with nothing, and the wealthy will also be limited, since they can no longer take advantage of economics of scale.

    But they will still be the wealthiest and most powerful, which is ultimately what they care about most.

    The world will regress. The second dark age will be far worse than the first, and far more widespread.

    And its all because social media allowed fascists to lie, and stupid people believed them, and those that didnt couldn’t be bothered to do anything about it.

    • Aermis@lemmy.world
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      2 months ago

      Nah. There’s way too many literate people, and information is easy to access. This isn’t going to be a dark age dystopia. It’ll be closer to corporate owned life.

      • Man_kind@sh.itjust.works
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        2 months ago

        Information is not easy to access. Wikipedia is the only real safe information. All social media, google, reddit, these can all be controlled by trump. Soon WB as well.

        AI is insane already. Soon it will be extremely difficult to know what is truth, and what isn’t, and accessing anything the government doesnt want you to see will be extremely difficult.

  • Octagon9561@lemmy.ml
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    2 months ago

    If I’m buying a car it would be a BYD, not some gas guzzler by an overpriced American manufacturer which are laughing stocks all over the world.

      • BanMe@lemmy.world
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        2 months ago

        Without a network of super expensive proprietary sensors that need replacing every time it rains? How on earth will you manage?