why don’t you drive an EV?

and the quasi-edge case of like, needing to move a largeish piece of furniture is pretty valid.

Obviously this varies from city to city but I haven’t owned a car in 15 years. Carshare means whenever I want a car I can get one, maybe it’s on my street, maybe it’s on the next street. There’s 3 providers in my neighborhood (1 peer to peer) plus more in the wider city. Not many EVs yet but I’m working on that, and one of the new entrants is a peer to peer EV car share. For longer trips I have traditional car rental and they are all getting EVs.

I know it doesn’t work for everyone, but owning a rapidly depreciating lump of steel and have it clutter up the garage for less than 5% utilisation is pure insanity.

I get the car I need when I need it, and I get an extra room in the house to hang laundry, brew sake and put the bike trainer.

if you have two dogs you need somewhere for them to ride, i dont have any dogs but its good to know if i found some i could just throw them in the back of my near crossover station wagon

also a safety positive feedback loop arms race where in order to feel 'safe' on roads where 18-wheelers, hummers and f-350s driven by 16 year olds with permits regularly traverse at 80-90 miles per hour, people want cars that are equally as big and heavy... just a very american freudian death drive

I know this will fall on deaf ears but small crossover SUVs are great and extremely useful, like all the time not "edge cases" especially if you have kids. this idea that I find my very reasonable gas mileage Honda CR-V for "big boy" macho reasons is beyond ridiculous, no one thinks this or Rav 4s or whatever are imposing

they really just are the new station wagons except easier to load

this guy is the prototypical tesla s driver in my mind

https://www.tampabay.com/news/crime/2021/11/26/tampa-surgeon-in-tesla-struck-bicycling-banker-at-about-80-mph-records-say/

xp i have a forester and agree with you that they are easier to load, and if by "not imposing" you mean don't look like a suburban then sure, but they are absolutely more dangerous than a wagon for other road users.

i have an outback and i passed a bmw 3 series wagon a while ago and was like wow my car is so much bigger

on the other hand there are some compact suvs that are actually small, which ends up being a pretty hilarious shape for a car, like a perfect cube

crossovers like the cr-v are only considered 'small' in america, and imo have been increasing in size with each generation - my family has owned two foresters, a second gen and fourth gen, and the fourth gen is definitely just... bigger, bloatier, more like a land boat than the one we previously had

"small crossover SUVs" are small relative to bigger cars. but if they seem small to you in an absolute sense then that's living in the US.

haha xp

europe and asia have much more support for hatchbacks like the toyota yaris, for example, which have a similar form factor but are just... smaller

https://www.vice.com/en/article/k7qnz3/us-automakers-phasing-out-affordable-subcompact-cars

its true that there are almost no cars here that are small like you see other places, the mitsubishi mirage, the cheapest car sold in usa, is prob the closest we get

yeah they are getting bigger, mine is 10 years old so not as much, I will never own a new car

a 10 year old CRV is 3" shorter than a new one. it's pretty big!

in cities you see a lot of smart cars and cars like the fiat abarth, scion iQ, cars that make a lot of sense if you live in a city but feel absolutely terrifying to take on the highway

fine it's huge! I'll light some candles in front of a picture of a sedan tonight

lol

there was a minor scandal in the UK last year when keir starmer hit a cyclist with his car and it turned out he drives a ("huge") rav4.

well, as a Forester driver your hands are clean

My very American father does fine with a Smart Car for most uses. Me, I have two children, 10 and 14 (with myriad activities and conflicting schedules). Plus I gig twice a week with a full drum kit, two or three guitars, and assorted accoutrements. What suits me okay right now is a 2010 Mazda 3 hatchback.

http://images.newcars.com/images/car-pictures/original/2010-Mazda-MAZDA3-Coupe-Hatchback-s-Sport-4dr-Hatchback-Exterior.png

Dunno what one calls it nowadays but I think of it as a small station wagon. I would love a plug-in equivalent but frankly can't afford it yet.

xp i modded my forester to roll clean coal

i live in a small city where it's easy to get around without a car, but you'd be surprised at the amount of (1) "big" cars; and (2) the amount of cars on the road in general

when i'm stateside, i definitely see larger vehicles and loads of trucks, which is weird to me. but mazdas are pretty much the bestsellers here and i think that's a decent-sized car, though i do consider them to be on the larger size. but hatchbacks are a thing, as well. pretty much any mid-sized vehicle that can carry snowboards, skis or tents. i assume nothing beats the convenience of having one at your disposal as opposed to renting, which is a big hassle

we have carshare here, as well. i used to use it a lot more, but again, nothing beats the convenience of having your own car, especially when going out on hikes or camping. also, people coming in from bedroom communities is a thing here, which adds to more cars on the road. they tend to have larger cars, as well

i love carshare for the convenience and it being environmentally friendly. they're good for short trips. and what Ye Mad Puffin and Ed say makes a lot of sense, it's just weird that a lot of people treat owning and renting vehicles in a pretty irrational way just out of pure convenience. i assume once you have kids, it's a hassle to drag the entire family out to the bus or train and with rentals, you're tied to car availability

it's like, the school calls and she's thrown up in the nurses office, you gotta go now. Midwestern cities aren't very friendly to mass transit, plus I visit my mom every week, she's in an outer suburb that would take probably 90 minutes by bus, just not practical. Minneapolis banned car share because of parking

the lovely Emma B and i have come back down to earth. neither of us have a daily commute that a car would help with. as Ed says, owning an expensive hunk of metal that's just going to sit there for a lot of the time is stupid. and there are more car share schemes in London than i'd realised.

the last piece of the puzzle is figuring out how to get 2 kids + dog from London to southwestern France. car hire websites are surprisingly terrible at this! where my disrupters at??

Do monthly car subscriptions exist in the UK? Might cover your trip and give you a preview of how much use you get out of owning.

Not ev but this is the active thread I guess

"The cowboy dream has created a booming market in prestige ruggedness.” @rachmonroe on the Texas vintage truck market https://t.co/WaqfEMmtWr

— Kyle Chayka (@chaykak) December 1, 2021

that article is bizarre. people have been buying and maintaining model-t fords and '56 chevy bel airs for decades, it's literally the same thing.

In Austin, as in the Bay Area, Nonnenberg told me, tech workers make up a large share of buyers. “People are spending a whole bunch of money to buy a 1964 Ford pickup truck, which is so rudimentary in its construction and design and capability,”

when you have never heard of the concept of antiques

the classic car market is going nuts right now, just like all collectables are since the pandemic, tho i think trucks are hot suvs particularly

new cars are so much better lol

some old cars do look very nice tbf

I thought that link was going to be about these kinda models:

https://i.imgur.com/RVGW0ew.png

i think the article is identifying a phenom - yes, car collectors have always existed but historically 80s cars didn't enjoy as much popularity as like 60s/70s muscle cars or w/e. that's definitely changed and i've seen some trendy, non-car people post recently about how all of a sudden they want a 1980s mazda b2000 truck for example.

yugo or gtfo

this is the relevant twitter feed, it’s been going for years. u+k

https://twitter.com/chodspot?s=21

weird 80/90s cars being in style pretty much just has to do with the fact that children of that era are of car collecting age now imho, and they are approaching it with a classic quirky gen x sensibility, that and the pandemic of course has made buying things more popular

i made a new ilcars thread mods (car modifications)

yeah that's def a huge part of it too xp

str8 fire beautiful retro hyundai EV concept cars

https://static.dezeen.com/uploads/2021/11/Hyundai-Grandeur-concept-car-hero-852x479.jpg

https://www.theverge.com/2021/11/15/22783810/hyundai-grandeur-heritge-concept-ev-80s

https://media.autoexpress.co.uk/image/private/s--bBYKrZVs--/f_auto,t_content-image-full-desktop@1/v1618587076/autoexpress/2021/04/Hyundai%20Pony-14.jpg

https://www.autoexpress.co.uk/hyundai/354771/retro-tribute-original-hyundai-pony-hatchback-unveiled

silly exercise but one would be foolish to deny the execution

Twenty minutes into this Mach-E rental and I'm already 100% "shut up and take my money!" I feel like such a shill...

given the inventory around here at least, that's the only way you get a car these days

nice xp

New thread: I am at an EV charging station

re: pace of electrification, the entire Audi fleet will be EVs by 2025.

they lying

i’m pretty sure that’s public knowledge!

what that theyre liars