So, things would be different if they weren’t what they are.
DB2
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Of course, it’s possible to protect yourself from most of the skim, scam and fraud, but the vast majority people don’t even try.
That’s what makes America great! You can fool most of the people most of the time.
intercst
Not for the limited comparison you asked for upthread. You asked us to compare expenses. If I want to avoid the skim and not pay many thousands of dollars more for acceleration I don’t need, then I don’t care that I’ll have to pay two hundred dollars more for gas than your electrons. I’ve avoided the unnecessary expense.
Plus, I don’t feel like overpaying for insurance, either. Yes, I know - your insurance is the exception to the general market trend that BEV’s are more expensive to insure. But presumably, any of the rest of us would experience the general market trend and have to pay significantly more for insurance.
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You won’t know that until you shop around and do the arithmetic, which is my point. Just like “rent vs. buy” or figuring out if a high-deductible health plan would save you money. Most people aren’t doing the arithmetic.
If your benchmark is what the average American is doing, at any income level, you’re losing ground.
intercst
Huh??? It took me a few queries, but google (AI maybe?) finally came up with this (they say it is based on FRED data) -
Do you have different data that shows hourly real wages being stagnant since the 1970s???
Part of the issue is similar to the typical housing lament. They say - “Those darn Boomers were able to pick up a house for $50,000 or so, today that’s impossible for us.” Yes, part of the problem is that houses have increased in price faster than inflation and faster than wage growth. But the other part of the problem is expectations - the ones complaining would never buy the kind of house their parents bought back in the 60s and 70s, because it was 960 sq ft, had 3 small bedrooms, and ONE bathroom, a small dining room/living room, and a tiny kitchen. There was no such thing as “family room” or “media room”, etc back then. Oh, and no garage, maybe a single carport if you were lucky. Home builders don’t build those kinds of homes anymore because nobody would even consider buying them!
The same may apply to cars - young people simply won’t buy a car without a radio in it, and without any display supporting Carplay in it, and without electric windows, and electric mirrors, etc. They just won’t buy them at any price, so as a result the carmakers can’t make such cars anymore.
By the way, did you check Tesla Insurance? I wonder if by driving only 2500 mi/yr and not particularly aggressively if they may be competitive? Right now they only offer insurance in about 10 or 15 states but the list has been growing.
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And again, even apart from that, the build quality is also much higher today. You might have been able to buy a 1973 Honda Civic for only $11K (adjusted for inflation), but it would likely be a broken-down, rusted-out sh!tbox within six or seven years. A modern Kia Soul might cost nearly twice the price (~$21K), but it will have nearly twice the lifespan (and come with a 6-year limited/10-year powertrain warranty to boot, vastly longer than the Civic).
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Don’t use average, use median. The top 10%+ ruins the average.
The mean from 1979 through 2015 had mostly been negative. Anyone stuck near the median has really fallen behind over the past 40 years.
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And the Kia Soul has triple the horse power with around the same gas mileage.
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Definitely. I’m old enough to remember that you had to do a “tune up” every so often, and by 60,000 miles the car was getting “old”, and by 100,000 all sorts of things would begin to fail, including sheet metal body parts. I spent quite a bit of time with Bondo and sandpaper back in the 70s and even early 80s trying to keep our cars in one piece. Heck, I particularly remember fixing a Honda Civic Hatch muffler with some sort of metallic mesh material and a spray made by Rustoleum (IIRC, you sprayed it on wet, and it dried into a hard black surface that would hold tightly to the remaining metal and “never” rust). That Honda was “old” and had 65,000 miles on it. It also had one problematic valve that made a nasty sound, I never bothered fixing that problem as the Honda was only a temporary car after my Mustang GT was stolen.
And since the build quality is so much better, it’s even possible that a new car today is effectively LESS expensive than a new car in the 70s. If a $47k car today can easily last 150,000-200,000 miles and 12-15 years, it may be a better value than a $5000 car in 1975 (average price back then, that’s about $32k in today’s dollars) that lasted 75,000 miles and 7-8 years.
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In our hybrid camry, at $4/gal - $200.
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I recently bought a very used version of one of the last manual transmission VWs (made in Brazil), and it is acting like I hoped, tough as hell and able to last until I go electric.
Most of Mexico is still rather rough for the low slung dominant profile of electric passenger vehicles.
Since I don’t have collision & comp, State Farm isn’t charging me for the Tesla’s higher repair costs (I’m retaining that risk.) But I was surprised that they didn’t jack the liability premium since I was going from a 250 HP Nissan Altima, to a 428 HP Tesla with 100% torque at zero rpm. Presumably, the Tesla is a more dangerous vehicle in the wrong hands.
I haven’t checked the Tesla insurance, but I occasionally ask for quotes on my coverage and I haven’t found anything cheaper.
My current policy is the cheapest rating group State Farm offers (7,500 miles per year or less), but I’m not getting any additional discount for only driving 2,500 miles per year.
I’ve checked a few of those “auto insurance by the mile” offers which are a fixed cost plus a per mile charge, and they weren’t any cheaper for me.
Every once and a while, I stop by the insurance kiosk at Walmart when they’re offering a $15 gift card if you let them quote your policy. The number they come up with is usually 3 to 5 times what State Farm is charging me. I don’t think people understand the level of skim, scam and fraud in insurance.
Also google “state farm class action lawsuits”
intercst
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That should teach me not to copy and paste without checking the facts!
Employed full time: Median usual weekly real earnings: Wage and salary workers: 16 years and over has had ups and downs but has trended upward, especially since 2015 (the recovery after the Great Recession).
That is also true of Real Disposable Personal Income: Per Capita (which takes taxes into account).
- Personal Income: This is the starting point. It includes wages, salaries, rental income, interest, dividends, and Personal Current Transfer Receipts (e.g., Social Security, unemployment benefits, veterans’ benefits, and SNAP).
- Minus Personal Current Taxes: Government taxes (like federal and state income tax) are subtracted from the total Personal Income.
- Equals Disposable Personal Income (DPI): This is the amount of money individuals actually have available to spend or save.
- Real & Per Capita Adjustments:
- “Real” means the figure is adjusted for inflation (using the PCE price index).
- “Per Capita” means the total is divided by the mid-period population of the United States.
The second is more pertinent since plenty of people with transfer payments buy cars and also pay taxes.
Wendy
Apparently they work differently than all other insurance providers. They measure your driving quality on a near real-time basis and then calculate a “score” (which can be displayed in the app and maybe also on the screen in the car) and they use that score to determine your insurance rate the next month. The interesting thing is that miles driven by FSD don’t count towards your score. That’s great for some people, but I’ve seen others complain bitterly about it, one common complaint is similar to this - “I drive 99% of my miles on FSD, and then I once drove half a mile myself and it dinged my score for ‘following too closely’ and raised my rate next month by $50”.
Let’s do a test. You get in your EV and I’ll get in my Ultimate Urban Assault Vehicle and we can drive cross country while towing a trailer. I could probably go there and back and do some sight seeing while you just might be getting there. You might win on cost out of pocket but how much value do you place on time?
All this arguing about which is better is like everything else, depends on your lifestyle. An EV will most likely never fit my current lifestyle.
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Lemonade cuts your premium by 50% when the car is running on FSD.
Of course, It’s going to cost me an additional $1320/year to activate FSD.
intercst
I’m not trying to sell you one, but a Rivian R1T does 0-60 in 2.5 sec and can tow an 11,000 lb trailer.
intercst
A DC motor has theoretical “infinite” torque at 0 rpm. Not in real life of course, limited by current. I bet it is pretty high though. Even a hybrid camry is pretty darn quick.
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- Lemonade doesn’t cover FL yet. I will receive an email from them as soon as they do.
- Do they dynamically change the premium for the periods of time you have FSD? I pay for FSD in the months that I’ll use it, and I turn it off for the months that I don’t use it.
Just yesterday evening they announced that miles driven on FSD will contribute “100” to your score!!!