What vehicle do you drive?

Punko said:

The cheapest 2nd hand Tesla in Belgium is around 27k, and that gets you an 8-year old shitter with a destroyed interior and 130k miles.

A very large part of the population can't even spend 27k on a brand new car.

Privately owning a car is a thing of the past for a large and growing part of the people. They just don't understand it yet. Will take the US a couple of years to catch up on Europe's insanity, but you are well on the way.

They are banning fosil fuel cars, and after that is done they will shift the taxes from those to EV's. Cheap EVs have terrible range so they won't replace what was banned.

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This EV only kick will cause a ridiculous amount of damage around the world. Just talking the United States for a moment:
- we have ZERO infrastructure to charge 80,000,000 EV cars. Just can't do it. The time and money it would take to build that infrastructure is WELL beyond what the nut-job extremists understand and claim.
- The power grid cannot cope with that much draw from pure EV transportation. We would have to build 6-10 MORE massive power plants capable of generating that much electricity. Guess what? It won't be clean and it sure as shit won't be solar or wind. Those methods are not capable of creating the power, nor are they actually "clean". So, Nuclear, coal, or gas. How do those EV cars reduce all our scary emissions when the power generation is far worse?
- You know all those rare earth minerals used in creating car batteries? Yeah, they don't exist here in the US. We would be even MORE dependent on foreign goods and everything will cost considerably more to build as demand goes through the roof. You think you're saving money at the pump? HAH, not when the EV costs more than 80% of people can buy in the first place.

This can only end badly, if law makers keep ramming this down our (United States, EU, etc.) throats. They don't understand, or just as likely, they understand and do it anyway for political and monetary gain.

Burren said:

This EV only kick will cause a ridiculous amount of damage around the world. Just talking the United States for a moment:
- we have ZERO infrastructure to charge 80,000,000 EV cars. Just can't do it. The time and money it would take to build that infrastructure is WELL beyond what the nut-job extremists understand and claim.
- The power grid cannot cope with that much draw from pure EV transportation. We would have to build 6-10 MORE massive power plants capable of generating that much electricity. Guess what? It won't be clean and it sure as shit won't be solar or wind. Those methods are not capable of creating the power, nor are they actually "clean". So, Nuclear, coal, or gas. How do those EV cars reduce all our scary emissions when the power generation is far worse?
- You know all those rare earth minerals used in creating car batteries? Yeah, they don't exist here in the US. We would be even MORE dependent on foreign goods and everything will cost considerably more to build as demand goes through the roof. You think you're saving money at the pump? HAH, not when the EV costs more than 80% of people can buy in the first place.

This can only end badly, if law makers keep ramming this down our (United States, EU, etc.) throats. They don't understand, or just as likely, they understand and do it anyway for political and monetary gain.

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Hell, California can't handle the number of EV's they have now!

Obsidian said:

The EPA range is like 200 but the real world range seems to be about 260-270. Definitely not on the level of a Tesla in terms of range, but range wasn't my primary factor in deciding since I have another car I can drive if I need to go somewhere far

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Weather also factors into that as well, colder temps will reduce the range significantly.

Axiel said:

Can't you still just order most models, (that aren't corvette/bronco etc), from the factory a few months ahead of time for near msrp? Last year it only took 2 months, one month before estimated, dealer didn't even want money down since they knew it'd sell fast if I somehow didn't pick it up.



They killed off the ST here along with any other normal cars, that might be a part of it. Used '21 WRX premiums are listing for near 10k over what I paid new. That's a 6 year old design with some likely hard miles put on them, too.

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Yes, but no. For example ford is on news for scolding their dealers about this. You'd order from Ford, but many dealers then on arrival were charging "regional market" type fees on top. Some fight then and get it at right price, but dealer happy for you to walk away as they then just sell it to a chump at that mark up.

Sludig said:

Yes, but no. For example ford is on news for scolding their dealers about this. You'd order from Ford, but many dealers then on arrival were charging "regional market" type fees on top. Some fight then and get it at right price, but dealer happy for you to walk away as they then just sell it to a chump at that mark up.

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And around here dealers are only using their allocations to buy floor models for the stealerships so you have to buy what is in inventory, meaning they can add whatever mark up they want. Of course, they also punch the warranty card (register the car) then resell as "used" for whatever price they want.

Just picked up a KIA Nero EV. First EV. Not a bad family package this. So far holding up nicely in winter and with 110 plug!

There are now 3.5 trillion miles driven a year. To be extra conservative lets say we need to support 3 trillion miles. Electric cars get about 3-4 miles per kWh. So just to make it easy we would need 1 trillion kWh per year generated, aka 1 billion MWh. The current smallest nuclear reactors produce ~500 MWh (vs the largest reactors producing ~4000 MWh). So at full capacity 24/7 one small reactor will produce ~4.4 million MWh a year. So even to support 75% electric cars it would require 228 of these plants (or 228 new coal plants as the average one produces about the same MWh).

The number of windmills needed is even more ridiculous. It would require our entire southern border to have a windmill 80 miles deep across the whole boarder to produce the needed electricty. Or every square inch utilized for windmills in an area the size of the state of Oregon. That is an insane amount of steel and resources and energy needed to build...

The guy at the BMW dealer keeps saying that word in the business was that hydrogen is the long term plan. BMW doesn't even sell a hydrogen car right now so not like he was trying to get me to buy one.

I don't think prices are going to come back down significantly, inflation is something that time has shown is permanent. It may slow down or speed up but prices don't really come back down. In 1970 you could buy a new Corvette for $5,000, which was already a substantial jump up from the years before. By 1980 it was over $13,000 for what was basically the same car, except with less power because of increased emissions regulations. If you'd waited for "prices to come back down" in 1970, you'd still be walking everywhere. The parallels to today are strong.

I bought a 540i two weeks ago. Definitely a dearth of young used cars, so for my money it was either a 2019-2020 with the 4 cylinder or a 2017-2018 with the 6. Went with the 6 as it's just a fantastic engine and I feel I'd regret going with the 4 in a few months. Also avoided getting a particulate filter this way, which is something that's just going to cost me money in the long run.

Hydrogen has a problem, it's dirt cheap if you produce it from natural gas, otherwise you can just use water and electricity but you have the same problem with battery. My personal take on hydrogen, it would be awesome on trucks, bus, etc. but not on private vehicles.

the biggest problem i see with hydrogen is your average joe trying to produce it's own from water, creating potential bombs in every garden.

Really stupid idea probably, but this caught my eye as a possible cheap daily but still sorta fun daily alternative to jag. Too bad rwd instead of x drive, would make it justifiable as my slow car. Just bad with the very many flavors o of bmw and unsure if its a dump before 100k which it's at vs something i can expect to go 200k.

Sludig said:

Really stupid idea probably, but this caught my eye as a possible cheap daily but still sorta fun daily alternative to jag. Too bad rwd instead of x drive, would make it justifiable as my slow car. Just bad with the very many flavors o of bmw and unsure if its a dump before 100k which it's at vs something i can expect to go 200k.

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It'll make it to 200k no sweat. Will just cost you $34,000 to get there!

Tholan said:

Hydrogen has a problem, it's dirt cheap if you produce it from natural gas, otherwise you can just use water and electricity but you have the same problem with battery. My personal take on hydrogen, it would be awesome on trucks, bus, etc. but not on private vehicles.

the biggest problem i see with hydrogen is your average joe trying to produce it's own from water, creating potential bombs in every garden.

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Your average joe isn't going to be cooking up hydrogen in his backyard...ever.

Hydrogen sucks to produce because all you are doing is converting one energy store for another...and hydrogen isn't terribly efficient anyway.

Hydrogen cars will replace everything on the road if they ever get fusion figured out. IF***************************************.

Honda already has the technology down pat. Their upcoming fuel cell car will cost no more to produce than ICE, and weigh not a pound more.

Sludig said:

Really stupid idea probably, but this caught my eye as a possible cheap daily but still sorta fun daily alternative to jag. Too bad rwd instead of x drive, would make it justifiable as my slow car. Just bad with the very many flavors o of bmw and unsure if its a dump before 100k which it's at vs something i can expect to go 200k.

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On that generation I'd prefer the RWD as the transfer case on those has a reputation for giving issues if the car wasn't maintained to the highest standards (front and rear axles need to have nearly the same level of tire wear at all times, so no mixing old and new tyres). The entertainment system only does 2G and 3G connectivity so many online services no longer work. You can update navigation via USB and still connect your phone for handsfree calling, it just won't do anything that requires more bandwidth like spotify or web browsing.

Otherwise they're decent cars, I've owned two of that generation. It's still a turbocharged direct injection engine with the potential for costly injector and fuel pump replacements, but you're not getting away from that on anything remotely recent. Easy way to test for injector issues is to start it from cold and let it idle for a minute or three, if it starts misfiring they probably need attention.

Other than that, when it comes to running older cars without a warranty, a car with not too many expensive to fix options is generally the better buy for long term ownership. If it has the variable ratio "active steering" that's 2 grand easy if it goes out. Adaptive shocks are double the price of regular ones. As far as I can tell from the one picture it doesn't have a sunroof, M-brakes or a HUD so doesn't look like a particularly loaded one, might be worth a look.

Fucker said:

Your average joe isn't going to be cooking up hydrogen in his backyard...ever.

Hydrogen sucks to produce because all you are doing is converting one energy store for another...and hydrogen isn't terribly efficient anyway.

Hydrogen cars will replace everything on the road if they ever get fusion figured out. IF***************************************.

Honda already has the technology down pat. Their upcoming fuel cell car will cost no more to produce than ICE, and weigh not a pound more.

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Thing is, it's very easy to produce hydrogen. Very low voltage required, and just tap water. You could set up a solar panel that does this all day, collect your hydrogen and store it with a compressor somewhere. This is where the danger begins