Isn't the moral of the story that I should be able to pick-up a cheap, relatively new, used electric vehicle in 2025?
BYD seems like it's making good workhorse EVs without the BS. They're not trying to break into the US yet - charging issues and all the politics over being Chinese - but I look forward to it. They're entering almost everywhere else fwict.
Just recently they've had a lot of TV advertisements here. Polestar (Volvo's electric brand, so also Chinese-owned but manufactured in Sweden), too, since sometime last year, and I've seen a few on the road.
I'm slowly reading an interesting book called Ludicrous: The Unvarnished Story of Tesla Motors. The throughline so far is that automotive manufacturing by long adaptation has been focused on optimization, wringing the defects out of the system first with the Ford model and now with the better Toyota model, but Musk's ethos at Tesla threw all that out the window, because he thinks of it as like software where the perfection is in the design work and the physical world just contains the boring detail of replication. This has been showing up more and more in the last couple of years as it goes into true mass production and people see the bad seams (literally).
It hasn't caught up to reality all this time because of all the gimmicks he pulled to keep the stock price hyped and to keep the narrative always about the next phase. Paradoxically, early adopters can be more tolerant of defects because they like the innovation. But when I read about Hertz letting go of a ton of Teslas partially blaming high repair costs, I wonder if we're finally seeing the shoe drop.
(I'm currently bogged down in the book where it digresses into something very close to forum drama - beefs with "industry" sites like Electrek for their conflict of interest with the lucrative Tesla referral program.)
5: My neighbor across the street is a pharma sales rep. His wife had a Honda CRV or HRV, and he had some kind of Volvo, but I guess the Volvo was a company vehicle, because he now has a company-issued Tesla. Not a high-end model, but I'll be interested to learn more.
If Subaru doesn't come out with a good electric Crosstrek, I'm eyeing an electric Volvo. My hybrid from 2015 is low mileage though, and I'm hoping to get 3 or 4 more years out of it.
I drive a 2006 Jeep Commander. It is remarkable that it still runs and remarkable that anyone would want to buy one.
I should replace it with a plug-in Prius, for the irony.
I drove a 2006 Honda Odyssey until last year. It finally started being super unreliable with 350K miles on it. We gave it to our housekeeper, who drove it down to Mexico City and gave it to her brother. Her brother has been tinkering on it in his spare time. He's repaired the broken automatic back doors and got it running pretty well. She sends me photos of our minivan around Mexico, like the traveling gnome or something, which I obviously love receiving.
Now we have a hybrid.
I don't drive that far. I'm at 93,000 miles or so.
heebie 1; I was worried about that when I bought a five-year-old Prius, uh, fourteen years ago. Haven't had to replace the EV battery; it is losing some capacity, but it looks like the rest of the car will wear out at about the same time (and it's not dead yet: good job Toyota engineering).
What I dearly want is (a) a kei truck or small van (b) US roads on which that doesn't seem like a deathwish.
Probably safer for the passengers than the weird Tesla truck.
8: This is great. Your old minivan sounds like it's living a really fulfilling life.
9: I think I'm under 50,000. I drove around 120 mikes a week for 5 years, then almost nothing for a year (a mouse got in to the wires) and now maybe 45 mikes a week.
13: Tim used to drive a lot more, but he can work remote some now, and his commute is shorter too.
I kinda drive a grotesque amount. My commute is about 20 miles, but then there's kid transports and massive roadtrips.
I don't like driving, because you have to be sober and attentive.
That sums up why I don't like driving, but do like blog commenting.
Plus, I've totalled two cars. Probably 3, but I'm not on speaking terms with the owner of the third car.
Because you maybe totalled their car, or for other reasons?
He said I totalled his car, but then he also said he says he was unable to ever work again and he didn't convince anyone.
Last month I replaced a car that someone ran into, and I told myself that I'd sit down and write a list of all the accidents I have been in during my 40-plus years on the road.
I have a minute right now, so let's give it a shot. In all cases, I got paid for damage that wasn't my fault. I have never had to pay for damage to someone else's vehicle:
1. t-boned
2. rear-ended (stoplight, totaled)
3. rear-ended (motionless, left turn)
4. parking lot mishap (parked)
5. t-boned (totaled)
6. parking lot mishap (parked)
7. rear-ended (stoplight)
8. fallen tree (parked, totaled)
9. rear-ended (highway, totaled)
So that's nine distinct accidents involving payments, but in the most recent two, my insurance paid. The most recent was a hit-and-run, and the second-most recent involved an uninsured tree. In five of these, my vehicle was motionless.
Some of these were fairly dramatic, but I wasn't meaningfully injured in any of them.
I've only owned a car since 2018-ish and don't drive it much. The worst I've incurred is once I parked on a truck-frequented street and came back to find my rear-view mirror snapped clean off, lying in the street some distance away.
I had to replace my own side-view mirror because the body shop by my office got lazy. I also had to use gorilla tape to repair my bumper because I wasn't going to pay for a new bumper after I learned that I could replace my own side-view mirror.
Anyway, because I totaled the new car instead of the old car, we now have a 17 year old car.
I replaced side-view mirrors on both my own and my father-in-law's cars a year or so ago. It turns out it's not very hard. The hardest part was finding a parts supplier that would ship to Alaska.
I donated the old car (1990 Volvo 240, bought 2002) when we moved. They tell you that for tax purposes you can declare its value as whatever you think is reasonable, that's between you and your accountant, but I looked its VIN up afterwards and found it went for $200 at auction. Ah well. And I had goofed it up in an accident a year before.
We've been minimizing our driving here. My wife recently brought up how little time our toddler has spent in a car seat; we did the math and it was at most a day and a half over a eighteen months, most of that on a trip to America. It's nice to not need to drive.
I have a regular-gas minivan that's pretty banged up but I hope will keep going well past 350K miles, which is about where I am. Now that there are only two children at home I could probably go to something smaller if I had to, but there seem to be a lot of situations where we need to fit more than five people in a car.
"If I had to" meaning I hate buying cars. I'd like to have a smaller one, but I don't think that's practical yet.
I've been back! You're not allowed to be excited anymore!
I will never stop being excited to see you.
Is that the handle of a Boeing 373's door in your pocket or are you glad to see me?
On the battery thing, OP1:
To that point, car shoppers looking into used electric vehicles should be cautious about their battery life and utility, experts say. For instance, while the latest EV models are getting 250 to 400 miles per charge, used EVs may only go up to 150 miles per charge.Which suggets to me buying/reselling/leasing batteries separately from vehicles might be more of a thing. Some of the battery manufacturers want to do that already.
If enough rental companies put electric vehicles in their fleets, you can get new batteries the way you can get new tires/parts by renting the same model as you drive.
My sister asked if she could have my car and I had to say yes. So now we are back to being a one car family, which I don't recall being quite such a pain in the ass the last time around.
Your sister should just go steal a Kia like everyone else.
Oh, that reminds me I just got the Hyundai recall notice. Ours had not been on the list of make and model years affected and, well, now it is.
It is fortunate for me that TikTok probably can't drive a stick shift.
On hybrid battery life, we bought a Toyota Highlander hybrid in 2006 and a Toyota Prius hybrid in 2008, using both as regular commute cars. At the time, we were told we might have to replace the main battery in around 8 years. Both cars are still on their first main battery here in 2024, and we haven't noticed any problems developing. Admittedly, I've been working from home since the pandemic, and my wife retired a few years ago, but the cars are still holding up fine.
I am hoping that by the time we need to replace our cars (both 2013) that there will be an obvious choice of electric vehicle for going up mountain roads. Decent chance as we don't drive all that much - both cars have about 80K miles. The thing with being out West is that most of the time I don't drive more than a few miles at a time, but highway miles add up really quickly for any medium-sized trip.
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Does anybody have any good TV to stream or podcasts to listen to while I lie in bed sick?
We gave up Netflix. We have FIOS but no fancy premium channels. I am a WGBH member, so I have access to all of the PBS stuff on Passport.
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48: A podcast I recently discovered that I don't think I've shared here yet is Midnight Burger. Sort of Doctor Who but ensemble.
I've never really been a Dr. Who person, but I'll check that out, Minivet. Will also try Broadchurch. I sometimes like the mystery show, Annika, but it can be too dark. Watching Frontline on Gaza is dark in a completely different way.
I'm a huge fan of the Australian lesbian feminist crime comedy Deadloch (Prime), working title "Funny Broadchurch." But my recent comfort viewing has been Australian personal/legal comedy FISK (Netflix), which I could and probably will rewatch forever. If anyone has seen Deadloch and is willing to follow advice I don't think anyone else ever has, the British-Swedish police procedural comedy Fallet (Netflix) made me laugh out loud at a time when I can't remember anything else that had. Outside the realm of crime, I got Peacock to be able to watch We Are Lady Parts and have no regrets.
Oh yeah, I was surprised how much I like Fisk.
55: if you mean Amazon Prime, we don't have that. No Netflix either. TNT, TBS, Nickelodeon etc. $7-19/month for one streaming service was my budget. And it's too fragmented.
Grateful to own a house and not be at the mercy of the current rental market, but our homeowners insurance went up a bunch because of flooding and storms - despite our not making a claim.
working title "Funny Broadchurch."
Finally someone has found the lighter side of murdered children.
Bostoniangirl, I've been enjoying the podcast The Secret History of Western Esotericism. I find the voice soothing and enthusiastic and the writing orderly, and it's full of historical bits to look up if you have the energy for a little distraction.
I haven't listened to the whole thing but am ?five? hours in.
59: Probably do now. Still resting but I passed it on to Tim who is in the early phase and luckily I turned a bit of a corner yesterday.
It's hard to get emotionally attached to Canadians, but I hope he feels better quickly. And you also.
Last year, a cardiologist/radiologist looked at it.
Not to find where it was, but to be sure the arteries were clear.
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Lyndon Johnson had been told by his pious grandfather to "take care of the Jews," a compulsion heightened by Johnson's own biblical attachment to Israel. As a young congressman in the 1930s, he had arranged visas for European Jews and helped smuggle Jewish refugees with fake passports into Galveston, Texas.|>
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Taking into account declassified South African arms acquisition data (which excludes very lucrative cooperative ventures and shared financing arrangements that are difficult to appraise), Israel's average annual exports to South Africa between 1974 and 1993 amounted to approximately $600 million per year, placing South Africa in the company of the United Kingdom and Germany as Israel's second or third largest trading partner after the United States|>
DeSantis dropped out. I think it's down to Trump, Haley, and Pat Paulsen.
Deadloch is hilarious; I need to finish it!
Hopefully, we'll never get another chance to see the politics of DeSantissment at a national level. Or he'll fail hilariously again.
The DeSantis humiliation is delicious
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Bright tobacco achieved this goal, and subverted agricultural reform most effectively.|>
1) I have a Prius+ with 260,000 km battery still checking out. My friend with an even older Prius just Opted to replace the battery rather than buy a new car. A few thousand, I think.
2) Dealdloch was great fun. And that despite the fact that I have relatively recently developed a ridiculous but very strong hatred of the Australian accent.